Improving Learner Confidence in Managing Patients With Opioid Use: A Standardized Patient Curriculum for Medical and...

The opioid epidemic has prompted health professions educators to update curricula around pain and opioid management. University of Colorado School of Medicine learners complete a novel open-source curriculum on pain and opioid management which includes standardized patient (SP) encounters. SPs are specialists trained to portray patient scenarios for the instruction and/or assessment of clinical skills in health professional trainees. We hypothesized that participation in the novel curriculum would increase learners' confidence in managing encounters involving discussion of opioids.

We adapted 10 questions from a previously published questionnaire assessing learner confidence in caring for patients who use drugs and administered the survey to learners using a retrospective post-then-pre design. Differences between post- and pre-Likert scales were analyzed with Wilcoxon signed rank tests. The Mann-Whitney U tests were used to compare differences in post- and pre-Likert scales between PA and medical students.

144/144 (100%) MS4 students and 43/44 (98%) PA2 completed the survey following successful completion of the novel curriculum. Post-median Likert scores were significantly higher than pre-median Likert scores for all questions across both degree programs, with all p values < 0.001. The median differences between post and pre-Likert scales for the PA2 ranged from 2 to 3. The median difference between post and pre-Likert scales for MS4 was 0.

This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a novel open-source curriculum in improving learner confidence in providing care to people who use drugs. This curriculum is freely available for use at https://www.ttreducators.com. Further data is needed to understand broader impacts of curricular change, including patient- and population-level outcomes.