IMPACT Education and Training

A woman smiling as she stands in the OHSU skybridge to the Portland VA Hospital.
Dr. Honora Englander founded OHSU's Improving Addiction Care Team to better serve hospitalized people with substance-use disorders. IMPACT makes its research findings and training materials freely available to providers nationwide.

In the course of our advocacy work, IMPACT has developed many educational resources tailored to the needs of hospital-based addictions care. We make these materials available to help communities deliver effective, compassionate care in Oregon and nationwide.

The resource library below includes a provider tool kit, training materials, clinical guidance, action steps and more.

Tools for clinicians

Alcohol use disorder

IMPACT toolkit

This comprehensive set of tools shares best practices to help hospitals implement treatment for substance use disorders.

It includes an overview of the roles and responsibilities for providers and staff, along with a case study to illustrate how the various tools can be applied.

It also includes practical tools such as medication protocols, risk assessments and point-of-care treatment guide, along with sample documents to aid provider communication.

Difficult conversations

The Oregon Pain Guidance offers information and resources for navigating difficult conversations with patients.

In particular, the handout from Oregon Pain Guidance "Common Traps and Negotiation Strategies" by Brad Anderson, MD offers guidance on handling common patient reactions during difficult conversations.

OPTIONS DC conference: For patients who need prolonged antibiotics, IMPACT partners with our colleagues in infectious diseases and others to conduct this structured, multidisciplinary, interprofessional care conference. OPTIONS DC aims to identify feasible treatment options that are agreeable to patients and providers using frameworks of harm reduction and patient-centered care.

Multidisciplinary endocarditis team (MEND) conference: MEND guides medical decision making and reviews surgical indications for patients with infective endocarditis. This structured, interprofessional conference brings together representatives from cardiac surgery, cardiology, hospital medicine, addiction medicine, infectious diseases, nursing, social work, case management, ethics, psychiatry and palliative care.

IMPACT offers guidance for integrating peers into general hospital settings.

Our resources include a preparedness checklist and guidance for identifying in-hospital support for peers. We also offer recommendations for peer hiring and retention, training and supervision.

Self-paced educational resources

IMPACT’s video series guides providers through common — and sometimes difficult — scenarios they may encounter when caring for patients with substance use disorders.

IMPACT developed these videos from its work modeling provider-patient interactions as part of our telementoring program for providers.

Physician

Social Work

Hospitalist Harm Reduction

Peer Support

IMPACT members have given dozens of telementoring presentations to providers throughout Oregon as part of our partnership with the Oregon ECHO Network.

IMPACT’s leaders present a clear view of how hospital-based addictions care could improve, debunk misperceptions about treatment for substance use disorders and identify action steps for hospitalists and hospital leaders looking to improve care.

Read “A Call to Action: Hospitalists’ Role in Addressing Substance Use Disorder” in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

IMPACT’s research is widely published in academic journals. Select publications include:

Read more articles in our full publications list.

Contact us

Meet OHSU’s addiction medicine specialists

A professional photo of Dr. Bradley Buchheit.

These clinicians and researchers are focused on finding solutions to the opioid epidemic.

COVID-19 hampers access to addiction care

An external shot of OHSU Hospital.

Research done early in the pandemic found that hospitals need to better understand how to care for people with substance use disorder, many of whom lack access to basic needs.