Do Psychiatry and Family Medicine Residents Differ with Regard to Attitudes towards Treating Substance Use Patients

Background and Objective: Substance use disorders are a major health issue affecting many who present for treatment for psychiatric and medical problems. Substance use is associated with employment problems, relational difficulties, child abuse, stress and percentages of untimely deaths. Training and exposure has been shown to lessen negative stigmatizing attitudes towards the treatment of people suffering from substance abuse problems. In the current study, we investigated whether psychiatry and family medicine residents would have different attitudes towards these patients.

Methods: 23 psychiatry residents and 19 family medicine residents consented were asked write about the last substance abuse patient they treated to prime their memory and then complete a self-report that measures clinicians feelings about their patients.

Results: We found no statistical difference between the family medicine and psychiatry residents with regard to their attitudes and feelings toward SUDs patients they treat. Our results also showed that experience or year of training in the residency program was not linked with any significant different in scores on the CTQ scales.

Conclusion: This result is interesting given that psychiatry residents often have much more training and exposure to this population than their peers in this family medicine residency. But less family medicine departmental hostility towards substance abuse patient as a whole, extra training in the field of addiction for the substance abuse treatment could be possible for this result.