Advanced Practice NuRses' Opioid Use Disorder Education Through a Massive Open Online Course (APROUD-MOOC) - The proposed project will have both a local and national reach through various virtual delivery platforms. The Advanced Practice NuRses’ Opioid Use Disorder Education Through a Massive Open Online Course (APROUD-MOOC) is designed to inform nurse practitioner (NP) students and those in residencies with evidence-based treatment strategies and empower them with practical training that is recovery and trauma-informed. Through the APROUD-MOOC, NPs will obtain the knowledge and skills to treat opioid use disorders (OUD) and prescribe medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD). This project builds upon a previous SAMHSA project, the Nurses’ Substance Use Education through a Massive Open Online Course or NSUE-MOOC, which provides substance use (SU) education across levels of nursing education, from undergraduate to advanced practice. In addition to creating the APROUD-MOOC, we have updated the existing NSUE-MOOC. There are 36,000 NP students who graduate each year, and over 355,000 NPs who interface daily with individuals who have a SUD and OUD; however, they often have limited training specific to interacting with these populations. Utilizing Purdue University technology strengths, we have created the APROUD-MOOC to provide comprehensive, adaptable, and sustainable education to NPs in various specialty areas, including psychiatric mental health, adult-gerontology, and family nurse practitioner programs. We have implemented a field experience at PSON during which NPs will, at a minimum, shadow practitioners in assessing and prescribing MOUD to partner with local healthcare providers to offer practical training to PSON NP students and, at the national level, provide instructions for collaborating schools on how to provide such training. Faculty from Purdue have incorporated modules from the MOOCs into their existing curricula for course credit or as a supplemental learning opportunity. The APROUD-MOOC are also available open-access through Canvas to everyone. We are using a multi-pronged approach to make faculty at nursing schools across the country aware of the availability of this resource. Through these modules, we offer recovery-based, trauma-informed education for NPs so that they may competently provide care in office-based MOUD treatment. To accomplish these goals, our objectives are: 1) to incorporate evidence-based SU and OUD content, integrating recovery, health equity, and trauma-informed principles of care into the MOOCs; 2) to establish and sustain a community Education/Advisory Council of APNs who prescribe MOUD and who will provide field experiences for PSON students and feedback on educational content; 3) to collaborate with experts in technological educational innovations to build pedagogically sound, engaging, high-quality modules that are available within both the NSUE-MOOC and APROUD-MOOC and that may be integrated into a variety of nursing curriculums; and 4) to capture appropriate utility metrics, including PSON student and faculty feedback and edit the MOOCs’ content accordingly. Through the Purdue SON, we are reaching over 40 students each year. We also track downloads of the modules from Canvas but are unable to track students exposed at other universities but do receive GPRA survey responses from those outside of Purdue. We have transformed our modules into free online activities for licensed professionals to earn continuing medical education (CME) credits and will be tracking the number of credits earned. We anticipate a minimum of 100 individuals earning these credits in the next year. In this way, graduating NPs and already practicing health professionals will be more informed on the assessment and treatment of people who struggle with SU and OUD, and thus, provide compassionate, recovery oriented, trauma-informed bedside and advanced care to individuals.
