An opioid overdose curriculum for medical residents: Impact on naloxone prescribing, knowledge, and attitudes

ABSTRACT

Background: Despite escalating opioid overdose death rates, addiction medicine is underrepresented in residency curricula. Providing naloxone to at-risk patients, relatives, and first responders reduces overdose deaths, but rates of naloxone prescribing remain low. The goal of this study is to examine the impact of a brief curricular intervention for internal medicine residents on naloxone prescribing rates, knowledge, and attitudes. Methods: Internal medicine residents (N = 160) at an urban, tertiary care medical center received two 1-hour didactic sessions addressing overdose prevention, including intranasal naloxone. The number of naloxone prescriptions generated by residents was compared to faculty, who received no similar intervention, in the 3-month periods before and after the curriculum. Resident knowledge and attitudes, as assessed by pre- and post-intervention surveys, were compared. Results: The resident naloxone prescribing rate increased from 420 to 1270 per 100,000 inpatient discharges (P = .01) and from 0 to 370 per 100,000 ambulatory visits (P < .001) post-intervention. Similar increases were not observed among inpatient faculty, whose prescribing rate decreased from 1150 to 880 per 100,000 discharges (P = .08), or among outpatient faculty, whose rate increased from 30 to 180 per 100,000 ambulatory visits (P < .001) but was lower than the post-intervention resident rate (P = .01). Residents demonstrated high baseline knowledge about naloxone, but just 13% agreed that they were adequately trained to prescribe pre-intervention. Post-intervention, residents were more likely to agree that they were adequately trained to prescribe (Likert mean 2.5 vs. 3.9, P < .001), to agree that treating addiction is rewarding (Likert mean 2.9 vs. 3.3, P = .03), and to attain a perfect score on the knowledge composite (57% vs. 33%, P = .05). Conclusions: A brief curricular intervention improved resident knowledge and attitudes regarding intranasal naloxone for opioid overdose reversal and significantly increased prescribing rates.

KEYWORDS:

• Curriculum
• medical education
• naloxone
• opioid use disorder
• overdose
• substance use disorder

Acknowledgments

The authors thank members of the BIDMC Healthcare Associates practice and Hospital Medicine program as well as George Silva from the InSIGHT Core team in the Center for Healthcare Delivery Sciences for assistance with data abstraction. They also thank Alexander Walley, MD, MSc for his mentorship.

Author contributions

JT, AR, CR, and WS contributed to the study design. JT designed and delivered the interactive component of the study curriculum. JT and AR collected data, and JT, AR, and KM contributed to analyses. All authors contributed to interpretation of results and manuscript writing and revision.

Additional information

Funding

This study received support from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, grant number R25 DA013582.