Project Title: Addiction treatment Counts: Expanding Interprofessional Training (AtCE IT!)
Disciplines included: Marriage and Family Therapy (M.A.), Clinical Mental Health Counseling (M.A), Family Psychiatric Mental Health Nurse Practitioner; Social Work (MSW).
A brief overview of the project as a whole: The AtCE IT! program aims to develop an innovative, high-quality, comprehensive curriculum related to interdisciplinary training and clinical practice in the use of SBIRT, assessment, and SUD treatment principles among interdisciplinary trainees in order to improve Health Professionals’ use of SBIRT in clinical practice, thereby mitigating the SUD treatment gap. Additional goals for AtCE IT! include improving the educational and supervisory support structure for trainees to learn more about SBIRT throughout their coursework and within their clinical practice, developing a pipeline for trainees to pursue their Chemical Dependency Counseling (CDC) credential and to advocate licensing and certification boards about implementing examination questions related to SUD on relevant exams, and to develop training materials that can be adapted for user-friendly implementation in other Health Professions curricula. Specific, measurable objectives that the project will accomplish: A total of 120 student trainees, 10 faculty members, and 20 site supervisors will complete the AtCE IT! training, and 50 students will pursue the Chemical Dependency Counselor (CDC) license in the state of Ohio Further, 90% of trainees in clinical practice will routinely utilize the skills and knowledge learned from the training as part of their clinical practice, and 90% of trainees will demonstrate improved knowledge and perceptions regarding SUDs, SBIRT, assessment, treatment principles, and interprofessional collaboration. Additionally, all student trainees will experience at least one advocacy experience related to advocating to licensing and certification boards about implementing examination questions related to SUD on relevant exams. Finally, data review will be used to inform modifications of curriculum necessary to improve AtCE IT! and to develop a program manual outlining the training protocol to allow for user-friendly implementation in other Health Professions curricula.
How the proposed project will be accomplished: To successfully implement AtCE IT!, we have developed an interdisciplinary research team with diverse content expertise to create the AtCE IT! curriculum within the context of interprofessional collaboration (see Position Descriptions). We have also devised a clear implementation plan and program evaluation plan (see Narrative). AtCE IT! will be built in as required assignments into extant courses to account for both profession-specific training needs and allowing interprofessional education across four Healthcare disciplines.