Opioid REMS: Moving Forward, Safely & Effectively

Target Audience
This educational program is designed for physicians and other healthcare providers who are DEA registered prescribers of controlled substances – including physicians, nurse practitioners (NPs), physician assistants (PAs), and, in some states, pharmacists. In addition, non-prescribing healthcare team members who support the treatment and management of patients with pain but are not authorized to prescribe such as pharmacists and nurses will benefit from participating in this educational series.

Program Overview
The goals of this initiative are to reduce the adverse outcomes of addiction, unintentional overdoses, and death resulting from inappropriate prescribing, abuse, and misuse of opioids and to improve the knowledge and competence of healthcare providers treating patients with pain, both chronic and acute, when identifying the options for effectively providing treatment to these patients by creating a personalized learning experience utilizing a dynamic mix of reality-based, moderated, clinical discussions regarding specific patient case examples. A personalized spacing and retention strategy built upon a microlearning design, will also support learners’ engagement with the content overtime.

Learning Objectives
Upon completion of this activity, participants should be better able to:

Discuss the basic elements of pain management, including the mechanisms of action of pain
Employ appropriate screening tools to effectively assess patients with pain, including identifying those with potential risk factors that could lead to abuse and addiction
Create effective, individualized treatment plans for patients with acute and chronic pain, integrating opioid analgesics as necessary to address the needs of the patient
Employ a variety of therapeutic options in the development of effective treatment plans, including the use of non-opioid pharmacology and non-pharmacological approaches
Manage ongoing therapy for patients with pain, modifying treatment regimens as needed to achieve adequate pain relief
Monitor and modify pain treatment plans, including the need to discontinue opioid analgesics in a safe and effective manner
Utilize best practices in counseling patients with pain, and their caregivers, about safe and effective use of opioid analgesic therapies, including treatment of opioid overdose
Apply the fundamental elements of addiction medicine to effectively identify and manage patients with opioid use disorder