e-Campus - Work Wellness Institute

Treatment of chronic pain requires “multimodal analgesia,” a management plan that often requires pharmacological as well as nondrug therapies, and very importantly large measures of clinician

guided patient self-management. Chronic pain management should rarely, if ever, be opioid mono-therapy. Understanding the clinical role and value of non-opioids, the so called “adjuvant” drugs, improves outcomes and reduces over-reliance on opioids and their demonstrated risks. The conflation of chronic pain management with the prescription of opioids, often at high dose, has for the past 20 years overlooked long-established core tenets of multidisciplinary chronic pain care that is fundamentally about restoring function and enabling behavioral re-training; these are best and more safely accomplished without opioids and other central nervous system depressants.  Chronic pain is not a state of opioid deficiency.

You will learn:

• Describe why chronic pain pharmacological treatment should not be opioid mono-therapy.
• Defend the role and value of non-drug options for management of chronic pain.
• Discuss the clinical value and potential side-effects of commonly used “adjuvant” drugs in the management of chronic pain, including anti-inflammatories, antidepressants, and anticonvulsants.
• Understand why, when, and how alternatives to opioids improve outcomes of your pain management plan