Jessica Heil, Dr. Rachel Haroz, & Dr. Jeffery Bratberg, Building Meaning: How Emergency Department Bridge Programs Improve Physicians’ Lives Through Purpose

Addiction care in the ER isn’t just about patients—it’s about fixing medicine itself.

Emergency Department Bridge Programs allow ED physicians to connect patients in the ED with comprehensive addiction care. While the benefits of bridge programs for patients with opioid use disorder are known, what’s less understood is how these programs affect the lives of the providers themselves. For a paper published in Academic Emergency Medicine last year, researchers interviewed providers about these programs and found that patients were not the only benefactors.

Learning Objectives

• ED bridge programs may require extra work, but this study demonstrates they make life for ED providers better.
• Much attention is paid to hard data and quantitative research, but qualitative studies can be persuasive as well.
• We all should acknowledge that people need to find meaning in their work and incentivize programs that generate that meaning.

Host & Guest Bios

• Dr. Jeffrey Bratberg studies the essential and emerging roles community pharmacists play regarding opioid overdose response, harm reduction, and opioid use disorder treatment. He advocates for pharmacists’ expanded roles in medication access, public health promotion, and policy change through research, practice, and teaching.
• Rachel Haroz MD is an emergency medicine, toxicology and addiction medicine physician in Camden, NJ focused on bringing innovative and low barrier access to care to vulnerable populations.
• Jessica Heil is a public health researcher specializing in addiction studies and health disparities. As Research Manager at Cooper University Health Care, she leads clinical research, supervises staff, and fosters community collaborations. She has extensive experience in opioid use disorder treatment and harm reduction, she is committed to advancing evidence-based healthcare interventions.

Timestamps:

• [00:03] Why Bridge Programs Are About More Than Patients
• [04:55] The “Aha Moment” That Changed a Career
• [07:33] The Surprising Source of Provider Satisfaction
• [10:55] How They Got ER Docs to Open Up
• [13:42] From Skeptic to Advocate—A Doctor’s Journey
• [17:59] What Providers Really Feel About This Work
• [20:33] Why Addiction Is an Emergency
• [23:45] The Power of 15 Seconds of Empathy
• [25:51] What’s Next—Methadone and EMS Programs
• [29:30] The One Story That Could Change Your Program

Links

• Amersa
• Heil JM, Lassiter JM, Salzman MS, Herring A, Hoppe J, Lynch M, Weiner SG, Roberts B, Haroz R. A qualitative assessment of emergency physicians' experiences with robust emergency department buprenorphine bridge programs. Acad Emerg Med. 2024 Jun;31(6):576-583. doi: 10.1111/acem.14880. Epub 2024 Feb 15. PMID: 38357749. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38357749/

Find us online at amersa.org, and see our tweets at x.com/AMERSA_tweets.

Funding for this initiative was made possible by cooperative agreement no. 1H79TI086770 from SAMHSA. The views expressed in written conference materials or publications and by speakers and moderators do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.

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