BUSM Expands Curriculum to Address Opioid Abuse

pillsAll Students Now Training in Addiction Prevention, Screening & Treatment

Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) has expanded the content covering opioid dependence and overdose as well as the training in prevention, screening and multidisciplinary treatment of substance abuse over each of the four years of the medical school’s curriculum in response to Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker’s effort to combat opioid addiction.

The four medical schools in the Commonwealth came together earlier in the fall and created 10 core competencies for the prevention and assessment of prescription misuse for all medical students in Massachusetts. BUSM immediately convened a group of faculty who teach students over the four years of the medical school curriculum led by Daniel Alford, MD, MPH, a national leader in substance abuse treatment and prevention, to expand its opioid curriculum linked to these core competencies.

The four-year integrated curriculum includes the biology of addiction, lectures and workshops on screening patients’ substance use and misuse, treatment strategies for substance misuse, and simulations where medical students work with standardized patients (actors playing the role of patients) modeling various substance use disorders to diagnose and develop treatment plans. Students are trained to use evidence-based counseling approaches for both patients who are hospitalized and those seen doctors’ offices.

All fourth-year BU medical students also are completing the BU-developed SCOPE of Pain program, a nationally recognized Continuing Medical Education course on treating chronic pain for US physicians and nurses that includes safe prescribing of narcotic medications. SCOPE of Pain received the 2014 National High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Award for Outstanding Prevention Effort.

“Our faculty are national leaders in addiction medicine,” said BUSM Dean Karen Antman, MD. “We previously provided a curriculum that emphasized preventing and treating addiction, and now have integrated the 10 competencies over the four years of our curriculum. Opioid addiction and overdose is a public health crisis. We are responding to provide a stronger foundation for tomorrow’s physicians and scientists.”