Addiction Medicine Fellowship Goals | Community Health Network

Mission

Prepare fellows to succeed at the forefront of the evolving role of addiction medicine by providing exceptional fellowship training through a robust array of substance use disorder experiences combined with a comprehensive didactic curriculum.

Vision

To become one of the premier addiction medicine programs in the Midwest.

Program Goals

Our program provides didactics and experiences to enable fellow development of the requisite skills, knowledge, and attitudes in accordance with the ACGME competency based objectives and milestones. Overall goals of the program include the following:

Patient Care

To provide quality clinical experiences, rotations, and supervision in addiction medicine outpatient, inpatient and consult-liaison; primary care, neurology, inpatient addiction psychiatry, emergency medicine, consultation-liaison psychiatry, outpatient addiction psychiatry, child and adolescent addiction, and pain management as required by the ACGME.
To provide training in diagnosis, differential diagnosis, pathophysiology, theoretical models, and treatments in substance use disorders as specified in the ACGME requirements.
To provide exposure to, and experience with, the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a wide variety of substance use disorders and co-occurring medical and psychiatric disorders and an appropriate mix of ages, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity.
To provide supervision that is appropriate to the fellow's knowledge and skills, and to provide increasing autonomy and responsibility as the fellow progresses through the program, as appropriate.
To provide a variety of elective rotations, including opportunities to pursue research during fellowship

Medical Knowledge

To provide regular, high quality didactics covering a range of topics and organized in a developmentally appropriate sequence across the year of training.
To provide learning opportunities, such as Grand Rounds, Journal Club, and evidence- based case conferences to enhance fellows' acquisition of knowledge and skills in lifelong learning.
To ensure adequate resources, program leadership, and staffing to allow a high quality education for fellows.
To provide annual formal evaluation of core medical knowledge via in-training exam (through ACAAM ADePT exam).

Practice-Based Learning and Improvement

To provide regular supervision, formative feedback, and evaluations, so that fellows can incorporate feedback into their practice and education.
To provide experience in the use of information technology in patient care; locating, appraising, and assimilating evidence from the literature; and applying it to patient care, as appropriate.
To provide instruction and experience in educating patients, families, students, residents, and other health professionals.
To provide case conferences, self-assessment and goal-setting, quality improvement activities, and other opportunities for fellows to examine and improve their practice.

Interpersonal and Communication Skills

To provide instruction and experience in communication with patients, families, other physicians, other health care providers, health care agencies, and the public, across a broad range of socioeconomic and cultural backgrounds. Understand the particular importance families and social networks play in patients’ recovery from substance use.
To teach skills in consultation to other physicians and health care providers.
To provide instruction and experience in interviewing, empathic listening, and therapeutic interventions. To assist fellows in the use of motivational strategies to support change.
To teach skills in written and oral communication, including maintaining timely, legible, and clinically appropriate medical records and facilitating effective, safe transitions of care.
To teach skills in working in and leading multidisciplinary teams.

Professionalism

To foster professionalism in both faculty and fellows and provide a supportive, respectful, and collegial learning environment. Recognize and address stigma towards persons with substance misuse and/or addiction.
To help fellows to develop a professional identity as an addiction medicine specialist, including demonstrating compassion, integrity, and respect for others; responsiveness to patient needs that supersedes self-interest; respect for patient privacy and autonomy; accountability to patients, society and the profession; and, sensitivity and responsiveness to a diverse patient population, including but not limited to diversity in gender, age, culture, race, religion, disabilities, and sexual orientation.
To educate fellows regarding, and promote thoughtful discussion of, ethical and professional issues particularly relevant to addiction medicine. Be aware of how the physician’s own experiences may affect their relationship with patients with addiction.

Systems-Based Practice

To provide instruction and experience in working in different health care delivery systems.
To teach fellows about specific issues in systems-based practice relevant to addiction medicine, such as MAT, self-help groups, employer and school assistance programs, governmental entities (licensing boards, DEA, etc.), peer coaches, and resources in the system available for treatment and support of patients.
To foster a spirit of patient advocacy and skills in coordination of care.
To teach fellows to incorporate considerations of cost effectiveness and risk benefit analysis into patient care.
To provide opportunities to identify and work to solve systems errors.