TPC-Journal-V5-Issue4

The Professional Counselor /Volume 5, Issue 4 460 Interdisciplinary Training Program Development This training collaborative began with an interdisciplinary response to a grant call by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to submit a proposal on providing training in Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT). SBIRT is a comprehensive, integrated, public health approach to the delivery of early intervention and treatment services for adolescents and adults dealing with substance misuse issues (Agerwala & McCance-Katz, 2012; Davoudi & Rawson, 2010; Mitchell et al., 2012). This particular university’s SBIRT Training Collaborative brings together master’s students from the counseling program, the Department of Social Work, the College of Nursing, and family medicine and internal medicine residents in an interdisciplinary training program using a team-based care model of evidence-supported SBIRT interventions. These programs were chosen because they all are disciplines that deal with issues related to substance misuse. Additionally, these were the only disciplines at our university that responded to the call to participate in this particular project. The objective of the project is to offer brief intervention and referral training to medical residents and master’s level graduate students in the area of substance use disorders over a 3-year period. An average of 20 students from each of the participating disciplines were expected to participate in the project annually. This training program began its third year of implementation this year. The SAMHSA grant enabled the interdisciplinary training collaborative to hire SBIRT consultants, a project manager, a project training director and qualified support staff to help administer the project. The funding is a critical part of the success of this project, allowing for faculty course buyouts across the participating disciplines. The interdisciplinary collaborative aspect of this project began during the initial meeting of educators from the various disciplines, which was organized to discuss submitting a grant proposal in support of an interdisciplinary training program. Each program’s director was required to submit a statement indicating how their program would benefit from an interdisciplinary training project. Two initial meetings and multiple e-mail exchanges later led to the formation of an interdisciplinary collaborative team and an agreement by the team on (a) the core foci of the grant, (b) the level of participation by each program and the roles of faculty representatives on the grant writing, (c) budget allocation parameters, and (d) the establishment of a project advisory council made up of the directors of each of the disciplines represented in the project. The purpose of the project’s advisory council was to develop the curriculum for the program, which included assessing and ultimately agreeing on the online modules to use on the project, and to establish clear guidelines for the clinical training protocol. Secondly, the advisory council also was charged with ensuring that each discipline provided input on the curriculum development and project evaluation processes. This aspect of the dialogue was critical as one of the objectives of the grant was for programs to incorporate interdisciplinary training foci in their individual discipline’s curriculum. Third, the council was charged with the responsibility of implementing and assessing the clinical training aspect of the interdisciplinary training project. Advisory council members committed to serve on interdisciplinary presentation panels and also to provide supervision during the interdisciplinary clinical training sessions. Finally, the council members were expected to be available to address student conduct issues as well as to meet with external grant reviewers during their visits to campus.