Two separate events, one hot-button issue: opiod safety.
AHEC Presentation
On May 5, Dr. Lynn Bowlby, GIM Associate Professor of Medicine, gave a presentation for a Duke Area Health Education Center (AHEC) conference in Fayetteville, NC, "Safe and Effective Opioid Prescribing for Chronic Pain". She and Daniel Sipp, a Duke standardized patient, presented a lecture role play: The Power of NO: Doing the right thing, not the easy thing. Together they acted out a patient/doctor scenario and showed how to say "No" to prescribing opioids in a kind and empathetic way.
"Using an actor for role play was a new technique for this group, and addressing a very under discussed issue," says Bowlby.
FDA Presentatioin
GIM Professor of Medicine, Dr. Lawrence Greenblatt also spoke recently about opioid safety. He was invited by the FDA to serve as an expert on a panel at a conference entitled "Training Health Care Providers on Pain Management and Safe Use of Opioid Analgesics – Exploring the Path Forward". The event took place in Silver Springs, Maryland on May 9-10.
The FDA organized the conference to elicit information from leaders in various healthcare positions to answer the question, "Should the federal government, through the FDA or another agency, mandate opioid safety and pain management training for prescribers?"
"We heard many different perspectives and arguments for and against required training," says Greenblatt, whose role was to inform as a health system leader grounded in actual patient care and front-line efforts to change behavior. Read more about Dr. Greenblatt and his influences on drug safety policies here.