The main goal of the Centers of Excellence is to raise awareness among primary care physicians about drug addiction as a health issue and to disseminate this information to better prevent, diagnose, and treat patients. To help reach this goal, Creighton University will complete the following tasks:
- Further develop the Addiction Training Scale (ATS) and administer it to medical students and residents to identify gaps in general drug abuse knowledge and methamphetamine in particular. (p6)
- Use the ATS results, combined with medical student and primary care residents and primary care physician focus groups and a task force of addiction medicine and education specialists to develop a core set of knowledge objectives on drug abuse along the medical education continuum. (p6)
- Develop a blueprint for a Drug Abuse Curriculum Guide that will contain modules that can be incorporated or adapted into any undergraduate medical or resident education curriculum (p6, 7 & 8 )
Because scope of the field is too large (for a 9 month contract), focus will be on Methamphetamine. A combination of 8 different educational modalities (or an “appropriate set of curriculum modules”), will develop a curriculum guide that will be available online without charge to all medical schools and residency programs.
- Lectures (M1, M2, M3, M4, PGY 1, PGY2)
- Problem-based learning (PBL) cases (M3, M4)
- Case-Based study (M3, M4, PGY 1, PGY2)
- Experiential learning (M3, M4, PGY 1, PGY2)
- Standardized patient cases (M3, M4)
- Personal digital assistant (PDA) delivery (M1, M2, M3, M4, PGY 1, PGY2)
- Podcasting (M1, M2, M3, M4, PGY 1, PGY2)
- Interclerkship course (M1, M2, M3, M4)
- Modules will be incorporated into the general medical school curriculum in such a way that provides adequate reiteration for the undergraduate medical student.
Examples of modules for Medical Students include:
- Didactic Lectures- PowerPoint slides and lecture outlines developed from NIDA resources
- Problem based exercises- cases with discussion questions
- Standardized patient encounters-patient training guides with OSCE scoring criteria
- Guides for suite visits to treatment programs and halfway houses to offer first hand experience with drug using patients- including a guide to set up and evaluate student learning on these visits with a pre and post visit preparatory curriculum
- Small group sessions with appropriate faculty members—During these, electronic media (including the NIDA website) will be used to introduce medical students to other resources to improve their knowledge of the resources available.
- Examples of modules for Residents Include:
- Residents: Didactics on general principles of diagnosis and treatment of drug related disorders, in particular methamphetamine, and provide information on the types of meth available and commonly used, their specific methods of action, clinical effects and treatment considerations.
- Senior Residents:
- Didactic lectures on principles of drug abuse diagnosis and treatment and provide specific outcomes of drug treatment, and offer comparisons to other chronic medical illnesses and their treatment outcomes.
- Experience in public policy development on methamphetamine abuse and its control and other administrative responsibilities in the operation of a drug treatment program.
