Boosting Medical Students’ Training in Drug Abuse

By Shirley S. Wang

There’s lot of action these days aimed at curbing the abuse of prescription drugs. The FDA is working on a plan to make it harder for people to get access to unauthorized prescription painkillers, pain specialists have come out with guidelines to help doctors manage pain-drug-abusing patients and drug companies have been developing abuse-resistant drugs.

Today, the National Institute on Drug Abuse jumped into the fray, announcing new teaching tools designed to help doctors-in-training — medical students and residents — learn about assessing and treating patients with abuse problems, including tobacco, prescription drugs and illicit substances. The materials mark the “first step” that NIDA has taken into trying to educate physicians about drug abuse, according to Gayathri Dowling, NIDA’s deputy chief of science policy.

Currently, the amount of education students receive in medical school about drug abuse varies a lot, and many docs aren’t sufficiently trained. These new materials, based on case studies and designed to be incorporated into the current curriculum, will present “real-world scenarios that medical students can grapple with,” Dowling told the Health Blog. For instance, methamphetamine users can get chest pain, and asking about drug use in that situation could affect how a doctor decides to treat the patient.

NIDA is also “exploring” whether to develop these materials into a continuing medical education course that licensed doctors could take to accrue the credits they need to continue practicing, says Dowling. The hope is that by getting to physicians early, doctors will incorporate the assessment and treatment of drug abuse into their regular practice, says Dowling.

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