Hundreds of young doctors training in San Antonio will learn new ways to spot substance abuse problems and get help for their patients quickly.

That's the purpose of a new federal grant for The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

UTHSC pediatric resident Tony Uranga is one of the next generations of doctors being trained at San Antonio's UT Health Science Center. Besides learning how to diagnose disease, he'll be getting special training on how to screen families for substance abuse.

"It's not something that they readily teach you in medical school," he said. "It's a very sensitive topic, so it's hard to broach, so there's definitely an art in the way you bring it up."

It's difficult to talk to people about questionable personal habits — activities like binge drinking, illegal drug use, prescription drug abuse, even legal activities like smoking.

Yet Dr. Janet Williams, a UTHSC pediatrics professor, who is training new physicians, says these students need more guidance in how to tackle these tough topics.

"We want to screen people through special interview techniques and briefly intervene on their lives, get them to understand this is a problem," she said.

The training program will start with pediatric and family medicine residents, and expand to included departments like OB-GYN, psychiatry and trauma. Over the next five years, the UTHSC hopes to arm budding doctors with ways to spot abusive behaviors, inspire their patients to change and get them the help they need.

"We want them to be much more aware of what are the resources out there? What can people do? How can people stop smoking? Cut down on their drinking? Stop drinking? Stop using drugs at all?" Dr. Williams said.

The UTHSC will spend almost $2 million in federal grant money over the next five years for this substance abuse training. The school is one of only 11 sites in the country to be awarded this grant money.

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October 9, 2008

News Summary

Addiction treatment and recovery advocate William Cope Moyers has written a new book titled "A New Day, a New Life: A Guided Journal" that explores the rewards and challenges of the first year of addiction recovery, the Fort Wayne (Ind.) News-Sentinel reported Oct. 6.

"Treatment is where the journey starts," Moyers said, but the road to successful recovery "requires daily commitment and effort."

In the book Moyers discusses different approaches to addiction treatment and recovery. Writing about addiction science, Moyers noted that for 10 percent of the population drugs or alcohol "turns a switch on in your head that you can't turn off." The book also talks about the 12-step approach to recovery and the work done by Alcoholics Anonymous.

This is the second book for the author, the son of television journalist Bill Moyers. It follows his 2004 memoir, "Broken: My Story of Addiction and Redemption." Moyers is currently an executive at Hazelden's Center for Public Advocacy.

"A New Day, a New Life: A Guided Journal" is published by Hazelden Publishing.