Pain Medicine CME

After completing Safe and Effective Opioid Prescribing for Chronic Pain, you will be able to:
• Discuss the breadth and quality of evidence for the use of opioids for chronic pain, including current gaps in knowledge.
• Describe appropriate assessment, monitoring and documentation strategies to meet best practice standards and medico-legal requirements to support opioid prescribing.
• Apply appropriate communications strategies when initiating, managing, and, if necessary, terminating opioids for patients with chronic pain.
• Describe, screen for, and manage potential co-morbidities in chronic pain patients.
• Apply a practical framework for decision-making on the initiation, maintenance, and discontinuation of opioid analgesics for the treatment of chronic pain.
This program meets the criteria of the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Medicine for 4 hours of risk management study and 4 hours of opioid education.

Target Audience:
Physicians, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, dentists, and pharmacists

Pain Medicine CME from the Experts

The Comprehensive Review of Pain Medicine online CME program addresses the challenge of effective, safe, and timely relief of acute or chronic pain with in-depth insights into evolving viewpoints of opioid analgesics, pain practice management, clinical updates, advances in pain physiology, spine technology, and neuromodulation.

Multidisciplinary speakers are experienced clinicians and teachers who offer not only practical recommendations, but also ways to integrate empathy and an understanding of the mechanism of pain. The sessions in this continuing medical education course highlight both existing and emerging evidence-based clinical strategies in the behavioral, pharmacological, and physical sciences. Key take-home points include:

• Limiting the Opioid Supply – Are Our Communities Safer?
• Psychotherapies for Pain – Underused But Effective
• Opioids and Perioperative Pain Management – A Reassessment
• Neuromodulation – Moving Past the Epidural Space
• Appropriate Prescribing and the Pharmacist’s Obligation.
• Restorative Neurostimulation for Refractory, Mechanical, Nociceptive Chronic Low Back Pain
• And more…

After completing Scope of Pain: Safe & Competent Opioid Prescribing Education, you will be able to:
• Discuss prevalence of chronic pain in the US
• Discuss prevalence of the use and misuse of opioid analgesics
• Describe the pharmacology, efficacy and safety of opioid analgesics
• Describe the components of a thorough opioid misuse risk assessment for a potential candidate for chronic opioid therapy
• Describe universal precautions and their role in chronic opioid therapy
• Describe monitoring and documentation strategies for chronic opioid therapy
• Describe initiating opioid therapy
• Apply counseling and communication strategies to ensure appropriate and safe use of opioid medications
• Assess differential diagnosis for aberrant medication taking behavior – Pain relief vs drug seeking

Target Audience: Physicians focusing on Pain Management

Every 7 minutes in our country, a person dies from a drug overdose, while a child is also born approximately every 30 minutes dependent on opioids. How do we as healthcare professionals offer non-stigmatic patient care and contribute to the progress of society in the right direction? Substance use disorder (addiction) is likened to an iceberg or a weed, in that the issues underneath the surface are typically even more complicated than what is viewed from the surface. Addiction spans hundreds of substances of abuse highlighted by stimulants (cocaine and methamphetamine), cannabis (plant, synthetics, and extracts), and opioids (heroin, fentanyl, and carfentanyl). As one can recall with the substance of ethyl alcohol (i.e. beer, wine, and hard liquor), a substance may never actually chemically change, yet can move across legal classifications of substances, leaving all healthcare professionals in need of knowledge on all substances of abuse. Opioid use disorder (opioid addiction) is combated with the medication-assisted treatments (MAT) of naltrexone, methadone, and buprenorphine, while opioid overdose respiratory depression is reversed with naloxone. Over the course of this activity, we will aim for “higher” education on all of these dynamic aspects. Unlike opioids, this activity is sure to open your eyes and possibly even elevate your blood pressure and/or heart rate!!!

This course provides 2 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit for license renewal and talks about the pharmacology, adverse effects, dosage, and administration of FDA-approved treatments for acute pain like nonopioid analgesics, adjuvant pain medications, migraine medicines, Tramadol/Celecoxib (Seglentis), Bupivacaine/Meloxicam (Zynrelef), IV Meloxicam (Anjeso), and Benzhydrocodone/Acetaminophen (Apadaz).