Treatment Demand and Training Need in Addiction

Primary care doctors’ perception of treatment demand and need for training in drug addiction issues.

Aim: To learn the opinion of primary care physicians (PCPs) on healthcare provision for the drug addict population and to determine their knowledge and needs as regards to continuing training and their attitudes towards drug addiction.

Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional survey of 301 PCPs in Castilla-La Mancha, Spain using a questionnaire designed to elicit physician’s opinions about drug addiction.

Results: The response rate was 85.0% (256 cases). 84.2% of the doctors considered that 10% of patient visits to primary care centres were related to drug addiction.

The doctors frequently experienced difficulty in:

the diagnosis and treatment of organic diseases associated with addiction (18.4%),
the assessment of the situation and level of dependence (36.7%),
support to treatment of some aspects of drug addiction (51.3%) and,
above all, the treatment of these addictions (62.9%).

Of all respondents, 53.8% reported they had received some form of postgraduate training in drug addiction issues.

Only 28.5% considered they had received sufficient information on specialised drug addiction services.

Conclusions: As regards to PCPs’ attitudes to drug addiction, we observed a positive attitude regarding the needs of those who abuse drugs, and the development of intervention programmes.

PCPs believe that addicts deserve treatment, that there should be more treatment programmes and that primary healthcare centres should establish links with specialised services.

JosÃ© Latorre; JesÃºs LÃ³pez-Torres; Trinidad Sanchez-NuÃ±ez; Juan Pedro Serrano; Juan MontaÃ±Ã©s; Francisco Escobar. Primary care doctors’ perception of treatment demand and need for training in drug addiction issues. Primary Care & Community Psychiatry, Volume 12, Issue 1 January 2007 , pages 33 â€“ 41.