INTRODUCTION Description of the Postgraduate Medical Training in Substance Abuse Treatment.
This training has been designed to provide a subspecialty educational program in alcoholism and drug abuse to provide sufficient training to assure the competency of a specialist in the field. This one-year program provides an appropriate, thorough clinical physician training as well as additional experience in research.
Clinical experience includes opportunities to observe, manage and judge the effectiveness of drug treatment interventions in patients with a wide variety of addictive disorders on both an inpatient and outpatient basis. Trainees are given opportunities to assume continuing responsibility for both acute and chronically ill patients in order to learn the natural history of ADA. This training helps ensure that the trainee understands the scientific issues currently being investigated in the field, present and potential applicability to prevention and treatment, and the interpersonal techniques needed to be an effective therapist. Trainees should understand the various approaches to identification of chemical dependency as a problem in an individual patient, the ways to confront the patient, the settings in which intervention may take place, and the variety of approaches to withdrawal of the addicting substance and long-term treatment. The participant should understand the limitations of current evaluation of treatment outcome, and the proper procedures for conducting such evaluation. The participant should understand the current social and political influences on availability of addicting substances, and the possible role of social policy innovation in controlling the spread and toxicity of addiction.
The final product of the program should be physicians who can integrate the science and therapeutic techniques of addiction into their general medical knowledge, and who can become effective bedside teachers of their subspecialty discipline to others.
Participants will rotate in both inpatient and outpatient Divisional units, where they evaluate and treat patients under close faculty supervision. This includes teaching rounds, individual supervisory sessions, a clinical and research practicum, and exposure to ongoing faculty research. Didactic work is organized around a weekly seminar, which continues throughout the two-year training period. The seminar includes both research methodology and academic readings on addiction.
