Hoping to get more physicians engaged in screening patients for addiction problems and referring them to treatment, the Baltimore County Bureau of Substance Abuse recently mailed an information package out to nearly 4,000 area doctors.With abuse of the prescription painkiller OxyContin a hot topic in the news, and debate raging about overprescribing Ritalin to youth, the time seemed right to reach out to doctors, said Michael Gimbel, director of the Baltimore Bureau of Substance Abuse. "People wanted to blame physicians, but we said we want to be proud partners with you" in preventing drug-related problems, he said.
"We do a lot of work with parents, police, the community and kids ... but one of the elements missing from the continuum was physicians," added Gimbel. "We've always been told that they're too busy, that they won't come to conferences. So we decided to reach out to them in a hands-on way, to sensitize them and to get them on board without attacking them."
The Physicians Reaching Out to Understand Drugs (PROUD) package includes a variety of materials, including screening and intervention tips prepared by the American Society of Addiction Medicine. "They are really fantastic, because they really talk to physicians in their own language," Gimbel said. "This is an area that most doctors really aren't trained in, so we wanted to get them something they could use."
Other materials came from a variety of sources, including a wall chart on common drugs of abuse published by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, information on online resources provided by Join Together, a Newsweek article on abuse of painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin, and fact sheets on addiction and medication management.
Information on local treatment programs and how to make a referral also was included. "We believe that as a Baltimore County physician, you can make a difference," Gimbel wrote in a letter mailed out last month with the PROUD kit. "By asking the right questions, observing a specific behavior and by learning the availability of local resources, you can enhance your opportunity to provide the best health care possible to your patients."
The mailing yielded some immediate success: Gimbel said one doctor called his agency after getting the PROUD packet, and referred a patient to treatment. "That was really gratifying," he said. Some physicians also expressed an interest in taking part in an addiction speaker's bureau, and Gimbel plans to feature one pharmacist who responded on his local TV show.
Baltimore officials also sent an evaluation form out with the PROUD materials, and were pleasantly surprised to get back more than 150 responses. Most doctors said that the information was helpful to them, and that they would use it to assess their patients' addiction-related needs. Few said they were seeing a big increase in requests for OxyContin and Vicodin from patients, but said they would welcome further information on alcohol and other drugs.
"This was a good first step," said Gimbel. "Now it's up to us to continue to do mailings and keep pulling doctors into our network."
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