A prospective cohort study evaluating enhanced addiction medicine curriculum graduate medical education on bias, clinical readiness and future practice

Background Studies demonstrate gaps in graduate medical education (GME) in treatment of opioid-use disorders (OUD). There is lack of consensus on best practices to address gaps between clinical readiness and community need despite action to improve education. Through enhanced OUD curriculum, we evaluated the impact in bias, clinical readiness, and intent for future practice OUD compared to usual training in a multi-specialty community-based GME Institution between 2018 and 2020. Objective Evaluate impact of enhanced OUD training during residency to usual training in GME.   Methods Residents and faculty members were voluntarily surveyed at baseline and after 2 years in years 2018 and 2020. Interventions included SAHMSA buprenorphine-waiver training, treatment of OUD with medication-assisted treatment (MAT) in the primary care office, and two required addiction medicine rotations. The survey included questions related to bias, self- perceived clinical readiness, faculty teaching self- perceived readiness, and intent for future practice. Results Participation in the survey was 29%, 45%, and 48% for the baseline, control group and intervention group, respectively. The enhanced training group demonstrated statistically significant improvements in four out of seven bias questions, six out of eight clinical-readiness questions and intention to utilize MAT in future practice. Additional findings include a decrease in intent to prescribe MAT from the baseline group to the control group over the two-year period.   Conclusions Data from this single-institution survey demonstrate that intentional enhanced OUD education can impact resident physician bias, self-perceived clinical readiness, and intent to treat patients with OUD in future practice.