Frequently Asked Questions

SBIRT.ClinicalEncounters.com provides skills training for Primary Care Physicians.

SBIRT stands for Screening, Brief Intervention, Referral to Treatment. It is an approach to screening and early intervention for substance use disorders and people at risk for developing substance use disorders. SBIRT emphasizes combined effort of screening and treatment services as part of a cooperative system of early intervention.

As many as 20% of primary care patients have substance use problems and primary care physicians could have a significant impact on their problems through providing screening, brief interventions, and referral to treatment (SBIRT) (Mersy, 2003). However, the reality is that few PCPs are routinely providing substance use screening and even fewer provide an intervention with their patients (Roche and Freeman, 2004; D’Amico et al., 2005). One reason is lack of adequate training (McLellan et al., 2000; Miller et al., 2001). Training needs to go beyond providing knowledge of clinical skills; it must provide an opportunity to integrate the knowledge through practice of newly learned skills (Butzlaff et al., 2004).

Our website will increase the frequency with which primary care physicians screen for substance use problems, provide a brief intervention, and make a referral to treatment when appropriate. This will be achieved by expanding upon the experiences of successful SBIRT and similar programs and the latest evidence to create a state of the art website that provides training to primary care physicians to enhance their skills in screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment for substance abuse. The website will also provide resources and networking opportunities to support their integration of SBIRT for substance abuse into their practices. Because the training is web-based, it will be scalable for any group size from the individual provider to whole organizations and can be easily deployed in a manner convenient to the busy schedule of most PCPs.

• Clinicians who need more information and training on screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment.
• Primary Care Physicians
• Resident Physicians who work in primary care

Clinical Tools will not share your personal information with any third parties. However, if taking one of our modules is part of your required coursework, your measurement data (e.g.pre/post tests) will be reported to your professor upon their request.

The website is being developed by Clinical Tools, Inc. This website is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA contract No. HHSN271200800038C).

On our About Us page, there is a brief overview of CTI, as well as a link to our corporate site.

We have migrated all our NP/PA training to Bup.ClinicalEncounters.com. You can continue your training at that site.

On the Homepage, select the activity that applies to you. If there is a cost associated with the activity, you can choose to either “Buy for Individual” or you can look at the Group Options available.

If you start the activity and are not satisfied for any reason, we will refund your training fee within 60 days of the original payment. Refunds will be in the original form of payment. After 60 days we are unable to offer a refund. If you complete the activity, we will not issue a refund. Email billing@clinicaltools.com with requests or questions.

Credits vary by module. Users will receive a set amount of CME credit hours upon completing the activity.

On Your Activities page you can see all activities you are currently enrolled in. If you have earned a certificate for the activity, a blue certificate icon will appear at the bottom next to the number of hours. Clicking on the relevant activity will take you to the activity progress page where you can find links to your earned certificates. You can also find your certificate on the “My Activities” page beneath your username in the upper right-hand corner of the site.

Please contact us to request a copy. It helps if you can provide the username or email you used and the list of activities for which you need certificates for.

Clinical Tools includes multiple measures in our modules to assess changes in knowledge, attitudes, self-efficacy, and intended behavior. We track this data for all users to assess the impact of our online curriculum.

If you’ve forgotten your password, you can request to have it changed. Enter in the email for your account and you will receive a link to change your password.

Visit our Information on Groups  page to learn more about how you can create a group for organization training (multiple users). Contact us if you have any additional questions.

As a group leader, you can add additional group leaders, add and remove users, and view user progress reports on the Group Management page. If you think you should be a group leader and don’t have access to that page, contact us and we will make sure you have the correct permissions.

If we gave your group a coupon code, proceed through the activity as an individual user and enter the group coupon code at checkout to access your activity. If you are the leader of a group with a coupon code and are interested in the group management features, let us know and we will upgrade your group.

If you were sent a link to a page titled “_________ Group Registration” you will need to register your account on that page to be correctly added to your group. This email may be located in your spam folder. Once you are registered, your group activities can be found under the “Your Activities” section of the menu. These are all the activities your group leader has assigned to your group. Additional activities, outside of your group training, may be accessible on the site’s homepage. Please contact your group leader if you have an interest in these additional trainings. If you already created an account, but don’t have access to the activities you think you should, please contact us and we will add you to the correct group.

For all group activities, your group leader has access to your activity progress, the date you completed training, and how you did on the pre/post-assessments.

Your group leader may require you to complete your training by a certain deadline. However, the learning system allows you to start and stop training at any time in order to complete on your schedule.