Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) Training for TJUH Trauma Staff

Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) is a proven public health approach for early intervention and referral to treatment for people with existing, or who are at risk of developing, substance abuse disorders. The Pennsylvania Trauma Systems Foundation (PTSF) includes SBIRT completion as an accreditation requirement under Standard 6 “Performance Improvement & Patient Safety Program.” In the 2016 PTSF site survey, Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH) Trauma Unit did not pass on the SBIRT requirement. The PTSF benchmark of completion is 80%; a data analysis of medical records from the TJUH Trauma Unit showed the 2017 completion rate to be 42%. A survey of the Trauma Staff reported that 62% had never heard of SBIRT. The goal of this project was to create a training module on SBIRT for the TJUH Trauma Staff to help them achieve the PTSF standard by the April 2019 site survey. The staff-training module was provided at the New Waves in Trauma Conference in October 2018, and it was delivered via email to the staff who did not attend the conference. Employees responded to a post-training quiz immediately following the training to assess its effectiveness on increasing knowledge and awareness of SBIRT. Ninety-eight percent of the staff said that the training informed them of their role in the TJUH SBIRT workflow, while 97% said that the training made them feel more confident in using the SBIRT with their patients. The results suggest that the SBIRT training was effective in its goals of educating the Trauma Staff, and can be used as an argument for the TJUH Trauma Unit to implement annual, mandatory SBIRT training