MGH Cares About Pain Relief Initiative

The Intersection of Pain Management and Addictive Illness: Where Do We Start the Conversation?

Date: May 30, 2006
Time: 8:00am - 12:00Noon
Location: Walcott Conference Room, Wang Ambulatory Care Center

COURSE MATERIALS
Resources
Exercises
"Aberrant" Drug-Taking Behaviors
Guidelines for Managing Pain
MGH Pain Management Center Opioid Contract
MGH Primary Care Opioid Contract
Pain and Addictive Illness Reference List

NOTE:

Enrollment limited to MGH & Partners Health Care clinicians.
Limited to 30 participants.
Pre-registration required through the Knight Center for Clinical and Professional Development. Call 617-726-3111.

DESCRIPTION AND GOALS
Concerns about drug abuse and addiction are widespread in society at large, and inevitably affect clinicians as well. Poor information or lack of information about the appropriate use of opioid analgesics in pain management result in both under treatment of patients in pain, and inadvertent provision of opioids to patients who are at risk of abuse. This seminar-style interactive course will begin to explore the complex relationship between the medical use of opioid analgesics and the problem of opioid addictive illness with the goal of providing clinicians some practical approaches to rational pain management with opioids. We will address questions such as:

What is the risk that prescribed opioids will lead to addictive illness?
How can we balance the imperative to treat pain with the public health problem of drug abuse and addictive illness?
Can we prospectively identify patients at risk for abuse/addiction?
Are published estimates of rates of addiction among patients treated with opioids clinically useful?
How is managing pain with opioids similar to and different from treating other conditions?

OBJECTIVES
At the end of this session participants will be able to

Distinguish among tolerance, withdrawal, physical dependence, and addiction
List the risk categories for addiction
Discuss the difficulties in estimating the proportion of patients with chronic pain who are addicted to opioids
Outline a protocol for managing pain in a patient with a history of substance abuse.
Explain the concept of ‘pseudoaddiction’

Faculty
Thomas E. Quinn, MSN, RN, AOCN
Project Director, MGH Cares About Pain Relief

Susan Krupnick, MSN, APRN, BC, CARN
Addictions Consultant, MGH Emergency Department;
President, Massachusetts Association of Registered Nurses (MARN)

Grace Chang, MD, MPH
Fellow, MGH Pain Management Center

Disclosures
None of the faculty report any relationships with industry that may pose a conflict of interest. Off-label use of some medications may be discussed during the offering.

Continuing Education Credit
Nurses, pharmacists and physicians who participate in this activity may receive continuing education credit provided they

sign in at the beginning of the seminar
attend the full seminar
complete and turn in an evaluation form
are professionally eligible

Massachusetts General Hospital (OH 239) is an approved provider of continuing education in nursing by the Ohio Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Center's Commission on Accreditation. (OBN-001-91). Provider status valid through 10/01/08.

Harvard Medical School is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians. Harvard Medical School designates this educational activity for a maximum of 4 hours in category 1 credit toward the AMA Physician's Recognition Award. Each physician should claim only those hours of credit that he/she actually spent in the educational activity.

Pharmacists registered in Massachusetts may submit CME-1 credits as part of the continuing education requirement for licensure renewal. Pharmacists should check with the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy if they have questions.

Sponsored by MGH Cares About Pain Relief
For additional information,
contact Tom Quinn at 617-726-0746 or
PainRelief@Partners.org.