Opioids: Safe Use and Management
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- Describe the scope of non-medical use of opioids, overdose, and opioid use disorder in the United States
- Provide safe and effective pain management for patients
- Perform appropriate opioid prescribing activities (patient agreements, urine toxicology screening, pill counts)
- Differentiate between addiction, dependence, tolerance, and pseudo-addiction
- Use Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMP) appropriately
- Manage challenging patient encounters related to pain and opioid prescribing by focusing on goals rather than pain eradication
- Understand side-effects of opioids, including analgesic tolerance, nausea, and respiratory depression
- Prescribe naloxone effectively
Course Description
This course covers guidelines for the safe and effective prescribing of opioids to assist healthcare providers in delivering compassionate, evidence-based, responsible care while improving the quality and safety of patient pain management.
Did You Know...
- According to the CDC, about 20% of patients presenting to physicians with pain-related diagnoses (not including cancer) receive an opioid prescription
- In 2012, healthcare providers wrote 259 million prescriptions for opioid pain medication
- From 1999 to 2014, more than 165,000 persons died from overdose related to opioid pain medication in the US