Researchers at the University of California Riverside School of Medicine are developing a curriculum to educate future physicians on caring for patients with substance use disorders.
Typically, students receive a few lectures on the topic over the course of their four years in medical school. The new effort at UCR School of Medicine aims to integrate more in-depth education on substance use disorder throughout the entire curriculum.
The research team will use a $900,000 grant from HHS' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to develop the curriculum, which will focus on training students and faculty in treating substance use disorders as a disease and addressing biases.
"We hope this curriculum will serve as a model for other medical schools in the country," Lisa Fortuna, MD, principal investigator of the grant and chair of the department of psychiatry and neuroscience, said in a news release. "It addresses addiction to not just opioids but also alcohol and nicotine. Our goal is to get our students certified in how to prescribe medications that treat addictions and leave medical school with significant and robust knowledge of how to treat patients."
UC Riverside joins a growing number of medical schools revamping their curricula. The University of Colorado School of Medicine in Aurora is the first in the nation to fully transition to an education model where students train in multiple specialties at once. Meanwhile, students at New York City-based Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai will now participate in a foundational module before starting classes about each organ system.