C06 – Expanding Interprofessional Teams: Training Future Healthcare Professionals in Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT)

Summary

Substance misuse persists and is under-treated across the United States (SAMHSA, 2021). Further enhancing the skill sets and capacity of diverse members of primary care interprofessional teams to include proficiency in the Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) model, could help to alleviate the `treatment gap’ (those requiring treatment, but not receiving it) by enhancing interprofessional teams at the pre-graduate level (e.g., health educators, health coaches) to expand capacity and meet the volume of patients with substance use-related needs. In this study, SBIRT knowledge, training satisfaction, and self-efficacy were evaluated among undergraduate and graduate health and behavioral health students following exposure to a series of online training modules. Upon completion of the training, graduate level students, regardless of discipline, reported higher satisfaction and greater knowledge than undergraduate students; there were no differences in efficacy between the groups. Additional analysis at the graduate level evaluated differences between behavioral health and medical trainees. Behavioral health students reported greater satisfaction with the training than medical providers; they additionally reported higher levels of efficacy in delivering brief interventions than their medical counterparts. The findings of this study reinforce the need and potential to infuse SBIRT training into higher education curricula for diverse healthcare professions in an effort to expand the integrated care team in the provision of substance use services.