Have a Problem with Addiction? A Practical and Stepwise Approach to Building a Robust, User Friendly Addiction Medicine Curriculum for Residents and Faculty

Education regarding substance use disorders (SUD) remains insufficient in medical training. This gap continues to persist despite the increasing rates of substance use related comorbidities, societal costs, and death. ACGME recommendations and 2023 DEA requirements kickstarted a shift in the emphasis in the diagnosis and treatment of SUD. With this increased awareness, there is an acute need for a robust, comprehensive, and user-friendly SUD curriculum for both residents and faculty. In this workshop, presenters will review a conceptual approach to structuring an addiction medicine curriculum while leveraging the current program structure and discuss practical applications that leaders can bring back to their institutions. Presenters will review practical approaches to help programs identify needs and resources in their institutions and will share the framework used by at their program, including considerations of mapping academic content, speaker selection, longitudinal themes, active learning strategies and providing special events (Alcoholic Anonymous meetings) for learners. Presenters will share a list of resources and guiding principles to seamlessly incorporate into a program and describe the steps to design the curriculum. The goal is to provide a user-friendly framework for developing an engaging and low-effort curriculum that optimizes resident and faculty learning through already existing clinical and academic schedule. At the end of the session, participants will leave equipped with tools to draft and integrate their own SUD curriculum into their training program.