[The following notes were generated by Michele Haight, PhD.]
IAMSE Webinar Series, Winter 2020
Speakers: Sherry Jimenez and Jeremy Buchanan
Title: “Methods for Incorporating Opioid Education in Health Professions Curricula”
Series: How is Health Science Education Tackling the Opioid Epidemic?
- To address the statewide opioid crisis in Tennessee, in July 2018, as part of the Tennessee Department of Health, Tennessee Together effort, the Commission on Pain and Addiction Medicine Education developed 12 core competencies for use as a guide in developing opioid education curricula.
- Given the large number of health professions programs at LMU, the aims for interprofessional opioid education have been the following: integrate opioid education across the health professions’ curricula and connect the LMU students directly with the community to better learn challenges faced by patients, families, community service providers, etc.
- The DO, PA and NP health professions collaborated in the development of a day-long, Controlled Drug Misuse Symposium in 2018 which focused on best practices for substance use disorder prevention and non-prescription treatment options.
- Elements of this symposium included: pre/post survey questions, pre-reading materials and patient testimonials.
- Lessons learned from this symposium: the symposium was too long and there was not sufficient time for meaningful interactions.
- Two significant learner outcomes from this symposium were: increased knowledge about widespread controlled drug misuse and increased awareness of controlled drug misuse among themselves and others.
- A second interprofessional symposium was implemented in 2019 which focused on the Synthetic Opioid Surge.
- Aims for this symposium included: understanding the difference between synthetic opioid and opioids and describing different treatment models can contribute to positive health outcomes.
- This symposium incorporated the same format as the first symposium with an additional QR code for question submission. The symposium was shortened to half day and included a one hour 15 min. simulation with a patient who had overdosed. This simulation included actual community service providers (paramedics, police officers, etc.) and Standardized Patients. Although this simulation was a valuable learning experience for all, it was cumbersome in terms of time and compromised the speakers who presented afterwards.
- The 2020 symposium will be 4 hrs. long and focus on the relationship between adverse childhood events and opioid abuse. This event will occur in a much larger venue to better accommodate all interested parties and will be streamed to campuses in 4 other cities and 2 universities in the UK.
- To increase opioid awareness LMU, in collaboration with its other health professions schools, has created a short video which explores the interprofessional aspects of a vehicular collision scenario. The aims for this film are to promote team-based care and guide appropriate communication and interaction with other health care professionals.
- If you are interested in accessing this video or participating in the 2020 symposium (via streaming), please contact Dr. Jimenez or Mr. Buchanan at the following: Sherry.Jimenez@lmunet.edu, Jeremy.Buchanan@lmunet.edu
- Final thoughts: the process to develop and implement both the symposia and the video have been stellar examples of meaningful interprofessional collaboration. These types of collaborations can serve as models for how to move forward with developing and implementing interprofessional education.