Addiction curriculum design for medical students

As mortality and morbidity due to substance use disorder (SUD) are increasing for women, especially during pregnancy and postpartum, it is imperative to equip medical providers with skills to identify SUD and initiate treatments. We designed a curriculum to provide third-year medical students with clinical exposure to SUD during pregnancy.

This novel, experience-based SUD curriculum was focused on providing adequate knowledge, skills and confidence to provide compassionate, patient-centred care to women with SUD. Obstetrics and Gynecology clerkship third-year medical students rotated 1 day through a clinic that provides Obstetrics and Gynecology and addiction medicine services. Congruent with COVID-19 limitations, students completed pre-clinic assignments and in-clinic tasks (e.g., screening, brief intervention, referral to treatment [SBIRT]) under supervision.

After implementation of this pilot curriculum, 20 students and 10 teachers completed surveys (100% response rate) with open-ended response items. Quantitative data and open-ended responses using electronic surveys were sequentially analysed to evaluate the curriculum's feasibility and acceptability.

We designed a novel curriculum that focused on SUD learning objectives and providing exposure to third-year medical students, and our findings indicate that it is feasible and acceptable to both students and teachers. In the future, we plan to provide this curriculum to both our third- and fourth-year medical students, and we encourage teachers and providers at other institutions to utilise it during their clinical training.