Patient-Centered Podcasts: An Educational Innovation to Improve Attitudes Toward Patients with Opioid Use Disorder Among Internal Medicine Practitioners

BACKGROUND: Despite the high prevalence of substance use disorder (SUD) in primary care and hospital settings, few easily deployable interventions exist to address stigma and empathy decline among general internists. AIM: To develop and pilot the first patient-centered podcast to improve attitudes toward opioid use disorder (OUD) patients among internal medicine residents and faculty. SETTING: Academic Medical Center General Internal Medicine department. PARTICIPANTS: Sixty participants in needs assessment; 15 participants enrolled in a non-controlled pre-post intervention study. PROGRAM DESCRIPTION: We developed a novel three-episode podcast series incorporating authentic lived experience with OUD and expert commentary using a collaborative co-creation methodology. Our systematic needs assessment informed deployment of this educational innovation. PROGRAM EVALUATION: Pre-post measures included attitudes (Medical Condition Regard Scale), confidence in OUD competencies, and participant satisfaction. Statistical analysis used Wilcoxon signed-rank and McNemar tests. RESULTS: Participants demonstrated statistically significant improvement in attitude (p = 0.015), confidence with motivational interviewing and offering resources (p = 0.04). DISCUSSION: This innovation suggests podcasts using patient voices can potentially provide attainable and scalable means to improve attitudes while addressing SUD education gaps. Larger studies are needed.