The ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine 40-Hour CME Program (Online)

The ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine 40-Hour Program is an innovative educational program empowering primary care and other providers to identify, treat, and/or refer patients at risk for or with addiction. Participants will learn how to recognize, screen, treat and refer patients with substance use disorders through 40 CME hours of interactive, case-based learning. This program is designed for healthcare professionals who received little addiction education during their medical training including physicians, clinicians, and other healthcare providers in primary care, emergency/urgent care, treatment centers and general psychiatry settings.

Why Participate

• Participants will receive official recognition and certificate for the completion of all 40 CME hours as laid out in the curriculum.
• Help patients that are already in your practice and be a part of the solution to the one of the nation’s deadliest epidemics
• Increase knowledge, skills and confidence for providers who may have received little or no addiction education during their medical training
• Learn how to integrate addiction medicine and payment models into your existing practice
• Connect with a community of colleagues and mentors for additional support with complex patients
• Experience content created specifically for primary care and other providers based on extensive needs-assessment
• Learn core competencies and knowledge needed to identify, treat, and refer patients with addiction to specialists when needed
• Earn a certificate of completion from ASAM upon completion of the 40-Hour CME Program

Curriculum Topics

• Attitudes towards addiction and treating patients with addiction
• Substance use disorders medications
• Neurobiology of addiction
• Screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment (SBIRT)
• Motivational interviewing
• Medical and Psychiatric Co-morbidities
• Diagnosing substance use disorders
• Developing a treatment plan (including ASAM Criteria)
• Special populations (such as adolescents, pregnant women, etc)
• Referral to specialists

Program Activities

The ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine 40-Hour CME Program is comprised of five activities. All activities align with the nine identified addiction medicine competencies for primary care providers. ASAM has also gathered a collection of resources and tools reviewed by experts related to various topics of addiction medicine and working with patients at risk for or with substance use disorders (SUD) to supplement participant’s learning.   

Registration to the program includes the online version of all activities. Participants may elect to complete activities in a live, in-person format when available to fulfill program requirements.  Additional fees may apply for live-in-person events. Registration fees for the full-price, 8-hour live workshop will be credited towards the overall price of the ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine 40-Hour Program for new participants.

Program Competencies

The ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine 40-Hour Program seeks to help learners achieve nine identified competencies in the addiction medicine field. 

1. Interact with patients and professional colleagues so as to display professionalism in all activities, by demonstrating commitment to the health and well-being of individuals and society through ethical practice, profession-led regulation, and high personal standards of behavior.
2. Identify their feelings and attitudes that promote or prevent therapeutic responses to their patients with substance use disorders.
3. Understand the addictive disorders as developmental biopsychosocial disorders.
4. Take an evidence-based approach to detecting substance use disorders. 
5. Respond to positive substance use screening results with brief counseling strategies, appropriate to the patient’s readiness to change.
6. Use motivational interviewing with patients ambivalent about changing their substance use behavior.
7. Conduct a biopsychosocial and developmental ambulatory assessment of an adult with a suspected SUD to match the patient to an appropriate level of care.
8. List the indications, contraindications and duration of treatment of evidence based pharmacotherapy for alcohol, tobacco, and opioid use disorders and refer patient to specialty care where appropriate. 
9. Reflect on the role of behavioral interventions for patients and families including formal intensive ambulatory and inpatient treatment and informal programs such as mutual aid groups in the recovery process for patients in their practice/ communities.

The 40 hour CME curriculum is structured around these nine competencies, of which each competency has several learning objectives. Activities in the curriculum will align with at least one of the learning objectives.

If you experience any difficulties, please feel free to call the ASAM office at 301-656-3920 or email education@asam.org .

Note:  This program is for providers who are seeking additional knowledge about addiction medicine. This is not a certification or designed to prepare providers for certification exams. Providers interested in becoming an ABMS certified Addiction Specialist should go to www.abpm.org and/or learn about Addiction Fellowship programs at https://www.addictionmedicinefoundation.org/.

Why Participate?

Participants are saying....

• “This is probably the best post-graduate training I've ever done…The webinar format was engaging and educational. I greatly appreciate the opportunity to have involved at that level.” – MD, Massachusetts

• “Appreciate your effort to organize the training. It was a great experience. I'd definitely recommend this to my primary care colleagues.” – MD, Maryland

• “…living in the Northeast, I’m afraid I get very provincial so it’s been really interesting to hear everybody…but it’s the across the country responses that have been so helpful.” – MD, Massachusetts

• “Living in Alaska, the resources for substance abuse treatment is probably not as diversified as in other areas…so this clinic has been valuable to me… providing the information and talking, collaborating with other professions in the field to help provide the best care of the patients.” – NP, Alaska

Extensive Development from Experts.... 

The ASAM Fundamentals 40-Hour Program was developed over multiple years, beginning in 2013. ASAM’s committee of experts created, evaluated, and revised the Fundamentals program continuously to ensure providers received the highest quality, most up-to-date  education.

Competency-Based Program Activities...

The ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine 40-Hour Program is comprised of five components. All components and activities align with the nine identified addiction medicine competencies for primary care providers. ASAM has also gathered a collection of resources and tools reviewed by experts related to various topics of addiction medicine and working with patients at risk for or with substance use disorders (SUD) to supplement participant’s learning.   

Positive Outcomes for Participants' Practice...

Some of the most commonly reported changes as a result of the ASAM Fundamentals 40-Hour Program were:

• Change in patient treatment plans
• Change in approach to patients with SUDs
• More frequent screening, e.g. screening all patients at least annually.
• More use of screening tools or use of different screening tools.
• More or better use of SBIRT
• More or better use of MI techniques
• Increased confidence in treating patients with addiction

ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine Workshop Planning Committee

ASAM CME Committee

Commercial Interest Definition

A commercial interest is any entity producing, marketing, re-selling or distributing health care goods or services consumed by, or used on, patients. The ACCME does not consider providers of clinical service directly to patients to be commercial interests.

Agency Support

ASAM thanks the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, for their support of the current Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine ECHO (FAME) series through grant number R18HS025067. 

Disclosure of Commercial Support

The American Society of Addiction gratefully acknowledges the support of the following companies in the development of The ASAM Fundamentals of Addiction Medicine Program.

Indivior provided an unrestricted educational grant to assist with the development, implementation and evaluation of this Fundamentals Program. 

Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME)

The American Society of Addiction Medicine has been awarded the highest level of Accreditation with Commendation by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) as a provider of continuing medical education (CME) for physicians. Accreditation in the ACCME System seeks to assure the medical community and the public that ASAM delivers education that is relevant to clinicians’ needs, evidence-based, evaluated for its effectiveness, and independent of commercial influence. 

The ACCME System employs a rigorous process for evaluating institutions' CME programs according to standards that reflect the values of the educator community and aim to accelerate learning, inspire change, and champion improvement in healthcare. Through participation in accredited CME, clinicians and teams drive improvement in their practice and optimize the care, health, and wellness of their patients.

Please see individual sessions for accreditation information for specific offerings.