LAUSR

Study Objectives: COVID-19 has created numerous challenges for the United States’ health care system Restrictions on in-person gatherings have impacted access to care for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD) by making it more difficult for clinicians to learn about evidence-based prescribing practices Many educational conferences, previously delivered in-person, have moved to remote formats but national training sessions are not always filled While virtual conferences have been described in other academic settings, there have been no interactive, virtually delivered, real-time, large scale courses offering a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Buprenorphine Waiver This paper describes a nationwide, digitally delivered, interactive DEA X-Waiver educational conference and provides guidance to Emergency Medicine organizations seeking to increase attendance at and engagement in remote courses Aim 1: Describe the implementation of the Get Waivered Remote Course Aim 2: Use the RE-AIM framework to evaluate our program outcomes Aim 3: Suggest potential opportunities for future improvement Methods: Our team delivered a virtual educational course to allow clinician participants to obtain their DEA-X-waiver Using a novel approach, we aimed to offset the additional barriers COVID-19 has created for clinicians to assess evidence-based practices to treat patients with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD) Our previous work has identified behavioral patterns that were found to act as barriers and restrict the number of clinicians who completed the “X” waiver process Physicians, residents, nurse practitioners and physician assistants, including those in training, were eligible for the course The didactics were delivered via the Zoom platform on May 20, 2020 from 10 AM to 6 PM Eastern Standard Time Utilizing the RE-AIM model we evaluated our training session’s outcomes in terms of course enrollment, delivery, reception, and overall efficacy Results: The DEA-X waiver course had 1,179 people enrolled, of which 799 attendees remained in the course for the necessary time to qualify for the X waiver 814 attendees completed the pre-survey and 103 completed the post-survey The majority of students (59 5%) heard about this course through emails sent out via medical association newsletters Most (52 4%) participants chose to enroll due to the Zoom webinar format making this training more convenient than other options Participants indicated that the largest barriers to receiving their waivers previously had been the time and hassle (44 7%) and lack of knowledge about the process (29%) The course was well-received, with 92 2% of attendees rating it as neutral or better compared to in-person classes and 94 2% indicating that they would recommend the course to a friend (measured by 6 or higher on a scale of 10) Prior to taking the course, 65% participants said they were at least somewhat familiar with the practice of opioid dependency treatment with approved buprenorphine medications, after the course, 98% of participants were at least somewhat familiar Conclusion: Results show that moving to a ZoomTM webinar training format in response to COVID-19 increased the number of waivered physicians by providing a convenient, hassle-free waiver course option This indicates that completion of non-mandatory training courses, including future DEA X-waiver courses, can be improved through the use of remote educational technologies