Exploring Medical Students’ Conceptions of Substance Use: A Follow-Up Evaluation

Abstract

Background

Despite the devastating impact of alcohol and other drug involvement and misuse within society, medical students still receive very limited exposure to these issues. The Scaife Advanced Medical Student Fellowship in Alcohol and Other Drug Dependency, offered by the Institute for Research, Education and Training in Addictions for over 10 years, offers a unique, 3-week intensive educational experience, including didactic, observation, and experiential learning in these topics to first-year medical students. The goal of this project was to evaluate the impact of the Scaife Fellowship on medical students’ attitudes toward patients with alcohol and other drug involvement 1 to 5 years after completion of the experience.

Methods

Past Scaife students and individuals who applied but did not attend were located and recruited to participate in an online attitude survey.

Results

Results indicated that Scaife Fellowship students largely retain their sense of role security around working with patients with alcohol and other drug involvement at the follow-up time point. Although therapeutic commitment or the motivation to work with these patients decreased for drug use, the decrease was smaller than that typically noted in the literature. The group of comparison students showed lower scores on both subscales at the evaluation time point compared with Scaife students.

Conclusions

A three-week experiential program significantly improved medical students’ Role Security and Therapeutic Commitment toward working with patients with substance use disorders. Moreover, the positive effects gained from the program were sustained over time.