Patient-Centered Podcasts: An Educational Innovation to Improve Attitudes Toward Patients with Opioid Use Disorder Among Internal Medicine Practitioners.

Abstract

Despite the high prevalence of substance use disorder (SUD) in primary care and hospital settings, few easily deployable interventions exist to address stigma and empathy decline among general internists. To develop and pilot the first patient-centered podcast to improve attitudes toward opioid use disorder (OUD) patients among internal medicine residents and faculty. Academic Medical Center General Internal Medicine department. Sixty participants in needs assessment; 15 participants enrolled in a non-controlled pre-post intervention study. We developed a novel three-episode podcast series incorporating authentic lived experience with OUD and expert commentary using a collaborative co-creation methodology. Our systematic needs assessment informed deployment of this educational innovation. Pre-post measures included attitudes (Medical Condition Regard Scale), confidence in OUD competencies, and participant satisfaction. Statistical analysis used Wilcoxon signed-rank and McNemar tests. Participants demonstrated statistically significant improvement in attitude (p = 0.015), confidence with motivational interviewing and offering resources (p = 0.04). This innovation suggests podcasts using patient voices can potentially provide attainable and scalable means to improve attitudes while addressing SUD education gaps. Larger studies are needed.