Pubdate: Tue, 18 Aug 2015
Source: Vancouver 24hours (CN BC)
Copyright: 2015 Vancouver 24 hrs.
Contact: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/letters
Website: http://vancouver.24hrs.ca/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3837
Author: Michael Mui
Page: 4

VANCOUVER PROGRAM TRAINS REGULAR DOCTORS IN ADDICTIONS TREATMENT

A Vancouver program at St. Paul's aims to train doctors who may not be
familiar with drug addiction to recognize the signs and target harm
reduction strategies like service providers in the Downtown Eastside
already do.

Dr. Annabel Mead is the director of the Goldcorp Addiction Medicine
Program, a $3-million program funded by a local gold company, that
trains up to eight health practitioners each year on drug addiction.

Over the course of a year, the trainees-up to six doctors and two
nurses - mix classroom sessions, study periods where the latest
addictions research is reviewed, role-playing demonstrations and
hands-on training, and field trips. All participants' salaries are
paid by the program for the duration of their study.

Mead said most health practitioners, unless they chose the addictions
field, have very little formal training.

"Medical students might get a couple of weeks in their whole training
undergrad," she said.

"They understand least about treating addiction to stimulants such as
cocaine or crystal meth, that remains a root challenge, since we don't
have good medical options to treat those conditions," though many have
some knowledge of alcohol, tobacco and opiate addiction because of the
availability of treatment medications.

Training currently focuses on three medical fields - those in internal
medicine, who are taught to see signs of drug caused infection, those
in family practice, taught to interview and ask the right questions of
teens and parents, and those in psychiatry, taught to screen and help
patients manage their addictions.

"(During training) they'll do detox for a month, they'll do in patient
addiction care for two months, they do residential treatment centre
for a month, they do complex pain training for a month - management of
pain and addiction concurrently," Mead said.

"We try and train them up, to be at the end of the 12 months, to be
fully functioning addictions physicians so they can deal with anything
from minor substance use disorders to managing severe substance use
disorders and across a whole range ... alcohol, smoking, marijuana and
all the other illicit drugs."
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MAP posted-by: Matt