A call for increased addiction psychiatrist engagement in medical student education

• Published in: The American journal on addictions Vol. 31; no. 5; pp. 403 - 405
• Main Authors: Balasanova, Alëna A., Ritvo, Alexis, Renner, John A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: England 01.09.2022
• Subjects: Behavior, Addictive; Curriculum; Education, Medical; Humans; Psychiatry - education; Students, Medical
• ISSN: 1055-0496; 1521-0391
• DOI: 10.1111/ajad.13298

Background and Objectives Addiction psychiatrists are ideally trained to provide trainees with supervised clinical experiences in caring for patients with co‐occurring substance use disorders and other complex psychiatric disorders. Methods This is a call for addiction psychiatrists to step up as clinical champions in medical student education. Our targeted audience is practicing addiction psychiatrists who do not currently have medical students on their clinical services. Results We suggest several approaches to incorporating learners into existing addiction psychiatry clinical services both at academic institutions and in the community. Discussion and Conclusions For medical schools without addiction psychiatrists on faculty, we suggest unique solutions for collaborating with external educational venues. Scientific Significance There is limited literature on the role of addiction psychiatrists in providing supervised experiential learning experiences for medical students. There has been no previous publication specifically advocating for increased addiction psychiatrist engagement in the clinical education of medical students.