The article, “More Effective Communication During Inpatient Addiction Treatment” has been
published in SAj in Volume 44 Issue 1-2.
In this commentary, the authors argue that historical approaches to inpatient addiction treatment favoring more confrontational, expert-centric, or paternalistic undercurrents continue to permeate the hidden curriculum in medical training. These older approaches unfortunately continue to inform how many trainees learn to approach inpatient addiction treatment. The authors go on to provide several examples of how clinical challenges specific to inpatient addiction treatment can be addressed by employing principles of motivational interviewing, harm reduction, and psychodynamic thought.
In the AUTHORS’ OWN WORDS, they relate the importance of their work:
“Gaps in medical education—including limited exposure to evidence-based approaches to patient engagement using motivational interviewing and harm reduction principles—leave some medical providers without clear guidance on how to effectively work with this vulnerable population.”
“Here we address several common clinical challenges encountered by medical providers on inpatient psychiatric services caring for patients with substance-related and addictive disorders. Though our observations certainly will apply to other clinical services (eg, inpatient general medicine and ambulatory psychiatry), we have developed this commentary with a focus on the inpatient addiction care setting both because it is where we have made these observations most frequently, and because of the intense biopsychosocial instability that we believe demands heightened attention to effective communication from us as providers.”