First In-the-nation Partnership Yields Competencies to Address Opioid Crisis in Real Time

Last fall, as part of a multifaceted strategy to stem the tide of preventable deaths due to prescription drug misuse, Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker invited the deans of the state’s four medical schools to convene and develop a common educational strategy for teaching safe and effective opioid prescribing practices, based on the recommendations from the Governor’s Opioid Working Group.

pillsWith leadership from the Department of Public Health and Massachusetts Medical Society, the deans formed the Medical Education Working Group. This group reviewed the relevant literature and current standards for treating substance use disorders and defined 10 core competencies for the prevention and management of prescription drug misuse. The medical schools have incorporated these competencies into their curricula and committed to assessing students’ competence in these areas. For example, 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. The findings appear online in the journal Academic Medicine.

“Our first-in the-nation partnership has developed cross-institutional core competencies for the prevention and management of prescription drug misuse that will reach all medical students in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As a result, Massachusetts’s medical students will be better prepared with the skills and foundational knowledge needed to be part of the solution to the current opioid epidemic,” explained BUSM Dean and BUMC Provost Karen Antman, MD. “This national opioid epidemic has required us to rethink our educational goals for all future physicians, and we urge other medical schools to incorporate these competencies into their curricula as an important step to address this epidemic,” she added.