This symposium will present the status of prescription opioid misuse in the
United States, with a focus on adolescents, who are particularly at risk. Several misconceptions among both adolescents and, often, their families/communities that contribute to the problem include beliefs that prescription drugs are not addictive and are safer than illegal drugs because they are prescribed by a clinician. Although sources of prescription opioids for illegitimate use can include drug dealers, the Internet, and forged prescriptions, the primary sources are friends, relatives, and clinicians. For example, 62% of grade 7–12 students consider prescription opioids “easy to get from parents’ medicine cabinets,” 52% report they are available “everywhere,” 51% believe they are not illegal, and 50% believe they are “easy to get through other people’s prescriptions.”
Teenagers from a recovery high school who abused prescription opioids, developed addiction, and are in recovery will be present live to discuss how/why they began abusing prescription drugs, their access to medications, how their drugs of choice evolved over time, and their trajectory of drug/alcohol use to addiction. Opioids are often necessary to treat pain, but clinicians have a responsibility to minimize the potential for diversion. The faculty will discuss the role of pain clinicians to reduce illegitimate access to prescription medications, and provide knowledge, tools, and strategies to educate patients about safeguarding their medications, disposal of medications no longer required, and the potential that exists for abuse in their homes. Strategies for appropriate prescribing will include risk assessment, careful monitoring, and thoughtful drug selection.
Learning Objectives
1. Explain how even legitimate opioid prescribing can have unintended adverse consequences in the community.
2. Summarize the potential adverse consequences of prescription opioid use by persons for whom they are not prescribed.
3. List sources and methods adolescents use to obtain prescription opioids.
4. Describe strategies to educate patients about their responsibility to safeguard prescription medications.
5. Employ monitoring strategies using available tools that will help protect patients from becoming a source of abused prescription opioids.
Faculty
Carol J. Boyd, PhD, MSN, FAAN
Director, Institute for Research on Women and Gender
Deborah J. Oakley Collegiate Professor, School of Nursing
Research Professor, Substance Abuse Research Center
Professor, Women’s Studies, Literature Science and Arts
Ann Arbor, Michigan
Scott M. Fishman, MD
Professor
Chief, Division of Pain Medicine
Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine
University of California, Davis, School of Medicine
Lawrence J. Ellison Ambulatory Care Center
Sacramento, California
This symposium is jointly sponsored by the University of Nebraska Medical Center, Center for Continuing Education (UNMC/CCE) and PharmaCom Group. This session will offer continuing education for physicians, psychologists, nurses, and pharmacists. This symposium is supported by an educational grant from King Pharmaceuticals. Participants with any questions regarding continuing education earned through participation in this symposium should contact Diane Frost at dfrost@unmc.edu.