Assessment of Osteopathic Medical Students’ Attitudes Towards Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and Alcohol Use Disorder (AUD)

Millions of people in the United States are diagnosed with substance use disorder (SUD) and alcohol use disorder (AUD) every year. Physicians’ attitudes towards SUD and AUD can significantly impact the quality of care they provide to these patients, but these conditions are not covered extensively in most medical school curricula. It is important to understand medical students’ baseline attitudes towards SUD and AUD because it will help inform development of training programs and better prepare future medical professionals to deliver compassionate care to patients with these conditions, thus, improving patient outcomes. Current literature focuses on the attitudes of allopathic medical students, with only three studies assessing attitudes within osteopathic medical schools. While these three studies focus on opioid use disorder, this study aimed to better understand osteopathic medical students’ attitudes towards SUD and AUD. We hypothesized that exposure to SUD and AUD would increase incrementally throughout years of medical school. Furthermore, we hypothesized that students further along in their medical training and those with exposure to SUD and AUD would have more positive attitudes towards patients with these conditions, prefer harm reduction efforts to criminalization, and endorse allocating resources to treating SUD and AUD. To test this hypothesis, we assessed osteopathic medical students’ attitudes towards SUD and AUD given their: 1) level of medical training and 2) self-reported exposure to these populations. A 30-question Qualtrics survey was distributed amongst 1485 first-fourth year osteopathic medical students at Rocky Vista University, and 334 responses were analyzed. Exposure to SUD and AUD increased incrementally with advancement through medical school (p = 0.001) and students in their clinical years (third- and fourth-year students) had significantly more positive views toward people diagnosed with SUDs than students in their pre-clinical years (first- and second-year students) (p = 0.0046, Cohen’s d effect size = 3.65). Moreover, surveyed second-year students were less likely than clinical students to believe resources should be dedicated to supporting and treating individuals with SUD and AUD (p = 0.0194, d = 0.03) and were less likely to support harm reduction over criminalization (p = 0.0079, d = 3.49). Respondents with self-reported exposure to SUD and AUD were more likely to support devoting resources to individuals with these conditions (p = 0.014, d = 2.47) but were not more likely to support harm reduction over criminalization (p = 0.731). Our findings highlight the importance of increased training on and exposure to SUD and AUD in the medical