Student Team From CU School of Medicine Selected to Create Substance Use Curriculum - University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus

Three students astatine the University of Colorado School of Medicine want their peers to amended recognize however to dainty opioid addictions and overdoses — and they person received enactment from the Coalition connected Physician Education successful Substance Use Disorders (COPE) to assistance enactment their plans successful motion. 

Under the supervision of D. Tyler Coyle, MD, MS, adjunct prof of psychiatry, the pupil squad — CU School of Medicine doctoral students Tyler Igoe and Alyssa Cole, on with Morgan Avery, a pupil successful the Physician Assistant Program — was 1 of 4 teams from schools of medicine nationwide to person its task selected in COPE’s 2022 Curriculum Innovation Challenge: Innovative Learning and Teaching About Substance Use/Opioid Use Disorders.    

Addressing acute and semipermanent problems 

As portion of the COPE inaugural to integrate addiction medicine contented into halfway clerkship rotations and different objective experiences, the CU squad volition make and instrumentality a caller program that teaches aesculapian students however to decently administer the opioid overdose reversal cause naloxone and however to usage microdose induction of medicine buprenorphine to easiness withdrawal symptoms successful radical with opioid usage upset (OUD). 

“Part of the situation with addiction medicine is that it’s a precise evolving field,” Cole says. “People are starting to wage much attraction to it and effort caller things and look for caller treatments. Even if we had a truly robust curriculum, it would request to perpetually beryllium updated truthful that by the clip we’re entering the tract and practicing, we are up to date. That’s what our circumstantial program is centered around.” 

Understanding naloxone 

Designed for fourth-year aesculapian students during the Transition to Residency signifier of their training, the caller program volition bid students connected the usage of naloxone connected patients experiencing an opioid overdose. Most often administered arsenic a nasal spray, naloxone tin beryllium taken by the idiosyncratic experiencing the overdose oregon administered by a aesculapian nonrecreational oregon adjacent a layperson who is successful adjacent proximity. 

Students volition beryllium trained to place the signs of symptoms of an opioid overdose, picture the mechanics of enactment of naloxone, administer naloxone to patients, and recognize the nationalist wellness value of prescribing and dispensing naloxone to radical astatine hazard of overdose. 

“Naloxone is an illustration of the ways successful which harm simplification and nationalist wellness are blending with medicine,” Avery says. “It’s thing that a batch of clinics springiness retired for free. There are ‘standing orders,’ oregon third-party orders, wherever you tin prescribe it to idiosyncratic knowing that they’re not the idiosyncratic that volition usage the medication, due to the fact that it’s truthful readily available. And it’s a large tool. We privation to limb radical with that knowledge, arsenic good arsenic letting them cognize to amended their patients however to propulsion for argumentation successful their clinics truthful that everybody who walks successful tin person entree to naloxone.” 

Better instrumentality for overcoming addiction 

Naloxone is utilized successful acute situations erstwhile radical are experiencing opioid overdoses, but for those looking for a semipermanent attraction for opioid addiction, buprenorphine is simply a commonly utilized medicine that binds to the aforesaid receptors arsenic drugs similar fentanyl, which reduces cause craving and withdrawal symptoms. The 2nd portion of the CU students’ COPE program trains students connected caller strategies to usage buprenorphine successful patients seeking attraction for OUD. 

“Buprenorphine is akin to methadone, but it tends to beryllium preferred by a batch of radical with opioid usage disorders,” Cole says. “There are a batch of barriers with methadone — you person to spell to a session each day; it makes immoderate patients drowsy. A batch of radical similar buprenorphine, but it tin precipitate withdrawal symptoms.” 

By administering microdoses of buprenorphine that dilatory regenerate opioids successful the system, providers tin assistance patients debar withdrawal symptoms, making them much apt to prosecute successful treatment. The COPE program volition thatch students however buprenorphine works, wherefore microdosing is effective, and how to place eligible patients for buprenorphine microdosing.  

“Being capable to pass to patients that, ‘Look, not lone bash we not privation to precipitate withdrawal, but we don't privation you to consciousness atrocious during this process’ — that's thing that we arsenic a aesculapian assemblage person thought about, and this volition assistance with that,” Igoe says. “I deliberation that's the benignant of happening that volition get much buy-in from radical going done a truly hard process.” 

Points for collaboration 

As the students enactment with Coyle to make the program that is scheduled to motorboat successful autumn 2023, they besides person regular online meetings with COPE staffers and the different pupil teams that were selected successful the curriculum innovation situation astir substance usage disorders.    

“It’s chill to spot wherever different aesculapian schools are successful their travel with teaching addiction medicine and getting to each bounce ideas disconnected of each other,” Cole says. “It’s a truly cool, collaborative space.” 

The students accidental they were gratified that their submission was selected by COPE, and they look guardant to seeing it motorboat adjacent twelvemonth to springiness students the tools they request to negociate substance usage issues successful their residencies and beyond. 

“It volition acceptable students up to beryllium much palmy and much comfy successful treating patients with opioid usage disorder, some successful an acute mounting with overdose, and managing the modulation if idiosyncratic wants to flooded their addiction,” Igoe says. “It volition besides enactment our students astatine the forefront, due to the fact that this is specified a caller thing. A batch of providers aren't acquainted with the microdosing method for buprenorphine yet. We volition beryllium capable to lend to a squad close distant by teaching everyone thing new.”