The quickly growing Opioid Epidemic is slightly killing thousands of Americans every day. Because of the increase of shame and legislative punishment, women who are pregnant are some of the most vulnerable and often result in exposing their fetuses to substances that can lead to permanent harm and Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome when born. Through substance screening for patients at risk, increasing education on contraception, and increasing trauma-informed approaches of patient-facing staff members, we hope to reduce traumatic experiences of women who are using substances while pregnant and reduce overall cases of NAS while also increase the patient’s self-efficacy and their ability to enter MAT or Medically Assisted Treatment. This project uses a brand-new screening tool that increases efficiency and may increase chances of determining which patients are high-risk and needing motivational counseling or substance rehabilitation. This screening tool is specifically targeting women who are pregnant and answers a gap in resources present in OBGYN clinics across the nation.
This project will have 3 overlapping timelines focusing on each branch of the project. The first task will be to educate our patient-facing staff on basic information of family planning, contraception options and sexual education so that they are comfortable answering questions from patients and are comfortable having these conversations with patients. We will also be doing a course on how to use, interpret and maximize the screening tool through seminars where they will have mock patients and be able to ask any questions that arise so that they feel confident in properly using the screening tool as well as host a trauma-informed training to increase the understanding of ACEs and the particular needs of the niche patient population seen at our clinic. We will continue holding Continued Education trainings but recognize the need for foundational understanding before moving on to the other two branches of our project.
After this first phase is complete, we will move on to repeated screening for substance dependency every trimester to ensure there is no new harmful tendencies or behaviors of our patients and so that we can monitor changes in use or frequency once MAT is begun. Simultaneously, we will focus on discussing with any patient currently not pregnant and of child-bearing age the importance of contraception and family planning. We will be focusing mostly on women who we know have tested positive for substance use or dependency and who is currently not on LARC in order to reduce the chances of an unintended pregnancy prior to entering MAT.
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