The Netherlands Drug Situation 2010 - Trimbos-instituut

y the National Branch Organization for Mental Health Care and Addiction Services (GGZNederland).Training and educationOn December 3rd 2009, the first eighteen addiction physicists finished their two-yearspecialist study in addiction medicine at the Radboud University Nijmegen. The studyincludes a theoretical and a practical phase. A second year-group is currently followingthis post-doc training. This specialized academic discipline is a primer in Europe. It isforeseen that in September 2010, the third wave of new students will start their specialisation.At the same time, a new 1-year study has started for the additional professionaltraining of addiction psychologists. In 2008, a national website was developed(www.verslavingskundeplein.nl) by a school for higher vocational education (InHolland).This website or portal was meant for information and education of students, teachers,professionals and researchers. The five clusters of the website included information,communication (e.g. a forum), knowledge, learning, and development. It was meant as avirtual meeting place for all professionals involved in drug prevention, treatment andcare, and drug policy (Buisman 2009). The website has now been concluded, and part ofit has been taken over by the website www.presentie.nl. Inter alia, this website givesinformation about how the "presentation approach" (Baart 2004) can be applied to addictioncare. The starting point of the "presentation approach" is being there in an outreachingmanner in the environment in which the addicts actually live.Benchmarking and Routine Outcome Monitoring pilotsIn Dutch addiction care there are three monitors that are also meant to support benchmarking:1. a monitor of cognitive-behavioural lifestyle trainings, run by the Amsterdam Institutefor Addiction Research, AIAR;2. a monitor on inpatient motivation centres (see National Report 2007, par. 5.1);3. a monitor on dual diagnosis treatment.The last two monitors are conducted by the Nijmegen Institute for Scientist-Practitioners in Addiction (NISPA). Routine Outcome Monitoring (ROM) is tried out in thethree monitors mentioned above, but also in dual diagnosis treatment and in detoxificationunits. An essential part of ROM is individual data collection on outcomes of treatment,whereas benchmarking may also collect these data on group level. The NetherlandsKnowledge Centre for Care (Kenniscentrum Zorg Nederland) published standardsfor benchmarking for mental health care including addiction care. 1Applying ROM in treatment fits in well with the introduction of performance indicators(see later this chapter). Experiences with individual level ROM data in mental health caresuggest that working with ROM on group level is helpful for outcome management (Ellwood1988). During the past years, ROM and its measurement instruments have alsobeen used for clinical management on individual level, that is for setting up and evaluatingindividual treatment plans (Andrews et al. 2005). In this sense, the use of ROM andits measurements are supporting decision making. Moreover, experiences have beenreported with outcome measures on different measurement instruments for individualpatients. For example, a case study shows that, while psychiatric symptoms decrease,the quality of life may also decrease due to setting higher goals (Keet 2010).1 www.kenniscentrumzorgnederland.nl64