From education to practice: Addressing opioid misuse through health care provider training: A special issue of Substance Abuse journal.
Opioid misuse may be ignored by providers who are unwilling or not confident in engaging the complex nature of substance use disorders among their patient populations. Addiction is a complex disease, and although providers often are comfortable in identifying, assessing, and treating the complex diseases of their patients, basic knowledge and skills of identification, assessment, and treatment expertise involving opioids for pain, addressing opioid misuse, and treatment of opioid use disorder are lacking. Initiatives to improve knowledge of opioid use, misuse, and opioid use disorder among health care providers are emerging. In this issue of the Substance Abuse journal, we examine the science and evidence base of educational interventions and public initiatives addressing opioid use and addiction. These initiatives include naloxone rescue awareness and programs, community-based training initiatives, and system or public health approaches to improve student, trainee, and clinician education/training revolving around opioid misuse and opioid use disorder. We call on stakeholders to fund more research to investigate and implement the proven means to educate undergraduate students, graduate trainees, and clinicians regarding pain and addiction. We also recognize the 2016 peer reviewers of our journal who have performed meritorious, volunteer service to advance the science of addiction.
a Division of Epidemiology, Department of Medicine , University of Utah School of Medicine , Salt Lake City , Utah , USA.|b Informatics, Decision Enhancement and Analytic Sciences Center, VA Salt Lake City Health Care System , Salt Lake City , Utah , USA.
Adam J
AJ
Gordon
c Department of Veteran Affairs , VISN 4 Mental Illness Research, Education and Clinical Center , Pittsburgh , Pennsylvania , USA.
John Daniel
JD
Harding
D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006282:Health Personnel / Q000193:education*; D006801:Humans; D009293:Opioid-Related Disorders
Opioid misuse; health care provider training; opioid use disorder