Improving Learner Confidence in Managing Patients With Opioid Use: A Standardized Patient Curriculum for Medical and Physician Assistant Students.

Background and Introduction: The opioid epidemic has prompted health professions educators to update curricula around pain and opioid management. University of Colorado School of Medicine learners complete a novel open-source curriculum on pain and opioid management which includes standardized patient (SP) encounters. SPs are specialists trained to portray patient scenarios for the instruction and/or assessment of clinical skills in health professional trainees. We hypothesized that participation in the novel curriculum would increase learners' confidence in managing encounters involving discussion of opioids. Methods: We adapted 10 questions from a previously published questionnaire assessing learner confidence in caring for patients who use drugs and administered the survey to learners using a retrospective post-then-pre design. Differences between post- and pre-Likert scales were analyzed with Wilcoxon signed rank tests. The Mann-Whitney U tests were used to compare differences in post- and pre-Likert scales between PA and medical students. Results: 144/144 (100%) MS4 students and 43/44 (98%) PA2 completed the survey following successful completion of the novel curriculum. Post-median Likert scores were significantly higher than pre-median Likert scores for all questions across both degree programs, with all p values < 0.001. The median differences between post and pre-Likert scales for the PA2 ranged from 2 to 3. The median difference between post and pre-Likert scales for MS4 was 0. Conclusions & Discussion: This study demonstrates the effectiveness of a novel open-source curriculum in improving learner confidence in providing care to people who use drugs. This curriculum is freely available for use at https://www.ttreducators.com. Further data is needed to understand broader impacts of curricular change, including patient- and population-level outcomes.