With a hefty, decades-long industry in the U.S. and increasing uses for a wide array of medical conditions, medical cannabis is commonly used for symptom management in America and countries around the world. Like it or not, medical cannabis is now part of the contemporary world of medicine.
Despite this, physicians still receive little training around cannabis in medical school and often rely mostly on anecdotal evidence. By proxy, medical students don’t generally receive formal education around recommending medical cannabis or managing its use.
Now, a new qualitative study from Kiran C. Patel College of Osteopathic Medicine, “Medical Students’ Attitudes, Knowledge, and Beliefs about Medical Cannabis: A Qualitative Descriptive Study,” aims to take a closer look at medical students’ perceptions of medical cannabis, including its efficacy, appropriateness in medicine, possible adverse effects, and patient value.
The qualitative study sought to answer the question: What do medical students know and think about medical cannabis? Researchers specifically aimed to conduct in-depth focus group discussions with osteopathic medical students to identify their attitudes, knowledge and beliefs around medical cannabis and to analyze the data from these conversations to identify emerging themes to guide new medical education curriculum strategies.
Regardless of the prevalence of medical cannabis in medicine today, the study’s introduction notes that physicians know “little” about the therapeutic properties of medical weed, i.e. what health conditions medical cannabis is effective in treating, and less about recommending it, for example discussing adverse effects and proper dosage. Researchers say this may be due to the lack of formal education physicians receive in med school.
“What we do know, however, is that physicians tend to rely on a combination of unreliable sources to obtain information, most of which are anecdotal reports,”