October 21, 2010
Pain conference brings together a variety of health and social service professionals
Prescription opiate use and misuse has received considerable national attention because of the growing number of deaths associated with prescription pain killers, a blackmarket in pills, and the rise in drug-seeking and addiction rates. A conference this weekend in Seattle will bring together professionals from a wide variety of health and social service fields to learn the latest in research and best practices related to pain management and opioids.
The topic of the continuing education course is “Pain Management: Frontline Pharmacological and Behavioral Strategies.” Physicians, pharmacists, nurses, psychologists, chemical dependency counselors, social workers and others who treat pain patients or see patients who use or abuse opioids will be attending. They will learn about pain management issues in both urban and rural settings, options for pain management, and addiction evaluation and intervention.
The health and social service professionals attending the conference will hear about the history of pain treatment and current knowledge about pain. They will also identify management issues in prescribing opioids for pain and strategies for talking with patients about pain and opioids. Behavioral options for pain management and methods for weaning patients from opioids will be taught. Also covered will be identifying and avoiding the 10 most common errors in opioid pain management.
The sessions include, “How to Communicate Without (in Spite of) the Opioid Prescription Pad,” “Hypnosis and Cognitive Based Therapy in Pain Management,” “Non-opioid Pharmacology for Pain Management,” “Opioids for Chronic, Non-Cancer Pain: A Changing Policy and Regulator Landscape,” and an Ask the Experts open mic interaction time.
This is the Third Annual John Loeser Pain Conference, named for a UW pioneer in improving the understanding of acute and chronic pain and its treatment. The conference is presented by the Center for Healthcare Improvement for Addictions, Mental Illness and Medically Vulnerable Populations (CHAMMP), based at UW Medicine’s Harborview Medical Center. It is sponsored by the UW School of Medicine’s departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, and Office of Continuing Medical Education.
Co-chairs of the course are Paul Ciechanowski and Richard Reis, both on the faculty of the UW Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences. Faculty members teaching the course are Alex Cahana, UW chief of pain medicine, UW Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine; Gary Franklin, medical director, Washington State Department of Labor & Industries; Heather Kroll, UW Department of Rehabilitation Medicine; John Loeser, UW Neurological Surgery; Joseph Merrill, UW Division of General Internal Medicine, Department of Medicine; Brendan O’Donnell, UW Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine; David Patterson, director of the Rehabilitation Consult Service at Harborview; Peter Roy-Byrne, UW Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences; Andrea Trescot, UW Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, and Eileen Whalen, executive director, Harborview Medical Center.
The course planning committee includes Antoinette Krupski and Mark Sullivan from UW Psychiatry, and Suzanne Rapp and David Tauben, from UW Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine.
For more information on the conference, please call UW CME at 206-543-1050.
