(178) Opioid Use Disorder: An Interprofessional Approach to Educating Future Pharmacists about this Public Health Challenge

Objective : The purpose of this research is to describe training Doctor of Pharmacy students on pharmacists’ role in caring for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) as part of the healthcare team. Activities such as these are an important part of pharmacy education and build a foundation for students’ future practices involving the treatment of patients with OUD.

Methods: Based on review of the available literature, many Schools of Pharmacy have implemented OUD IPE activities, however there is limited information on sustained annual events of this magnitude or descriptions of a virtual delivery model. Since 2017, OUD has been the focus of an annual activity with students from multiple health professions programs across two campuses which consisted of four parts: naloxone training, guest speakers, resource review and case studies. A post-activity survey was administered at the conclusion of both the live and virtual offerings.

Results: Student agreement with the survey item, “This activity allowed me to learn with the other health professions students in my group”, has sustained a 45% increase since introduction of the cases, even with the virtual offering, shows that the activity met its objectives of increasing alignment with a core value of IPE.

Conclusions: This activity allowed students to see that treating patients with OUD is multifactorial, complex, and best achieved through an interprofessional team. This large-scale sustainable IPE activity can be delivered in person or virtually and is transferable to numerous healthcare practice areas and professional experience levels.