Using contact-based education to destigmatize opioid use disorder among medical students

Abstract

All first- and second-year (i.e., pre-clinical) medical students at a large, Midwestern medical school with three campuses were invited to participate in a two-arm, parallel educational study comparing the efficacy of two types of curricular interventions. Students at the main campus attended the modified contact-based education panel or the didactic lecture in person, while students at the two distance campuses attended the modified contact-based education or lecture remotely using the University's videoconferencing system. <i>Impact:</i> A total of 109 students participated in the study (average age 24.2 years (<i>SD</i> = 2.6), 64.2% female, 79.8% white, 56.0% second-year students, 67.9% attended on main campus, lecture = 52 participants, modified contact-based = 57 participants). Baseline responses were similar across groups. Following the session, participants in both interventions rated drug abuse (percent increase = 21.2%, <i>p</i> < .001) and prescription drug diversion (percent increase = 7.6%, <i>p</i> = .004) as more serious problems. Participants from both interventions expressed increased confidence in caring for patients with OUD (percent increase = 45.5%, <i>p</i> < .001) and increased interest in pursuing MAT training (percent increase = 21.5%, <i>p</i> = .04). Both curricular interventions were equally effective at reducing OUD stigma with a significant 8.2% decrease in total stigma scores and a large effect size (<i>p</i> < .001, η_p² = .34). Lastly, participants with lower post-assessment OUD stigma scores were more likely to indicate that they would pursue additional training to provide MAT (<i>p</i> = .02). <i>Lessons learned:</i> Exposure to opioid-specific education with a focus on MAT and recovery, regardless of education type, positively affected opioid-related postgraduate intentions and reduced OUD stigma. Notably, these findings suggest that there are multiple efficacious techniques to reduce OUD stigma during preclinical training.