MHA hosted an educational webinar Wednesday for the new Pain Stewardship Program (PSP) it announced with Mallinckrodt Pharmaceuticals. The new PSP for healthcare providers and clinical staff was developed in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of expert advisors including representatives from MHA’s Substance Use Disorder Prevention and Treatment Task Force (SUDPTTF), led by Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital Plymouth’s John M. Connolly MD, Chairman of the Department of Anesthesia and VPMM, and James A Berghelli, R.Ph, MS, Director of Clinical Integration.
The PSP is intended to educate hospital stakeholders on multimodal analgesia (MMA)-based acute pain management to support improvements in in-hospital opioid use, length of stay (LOS) and satisfaction with treatment. The program provides evidence-based, educational pain management tools to help assess current hospital protocols and identify areas for improvement.
“Massachusetts hospitals and clinicians have made significant improvements in reducing overall opioid usage as well as educating our patients on associated risk factors and proper disposal of opioids. Our providers are also committed to developing alternative pain management practices that improve patient satisfaction, safety and outcomes,” said Patricia M. Noga, PhD, RN, MHA’s Vice President of Clinical Affairs and the Chair of the MHA SUDPTTF. “The Pain Stewardship Program emphasizes non-opioid analgesics and techniques as first-line therapy that is a balanced acute pain management practice, which we believe will assist in addressing the opioid crisis impacting our communities.”
Resources and tools will be available via
www.PainStewardship.com, and
MHA’s SUDPTTF webpages to help institutions build internal consensus, implement recommendations, educate surgical patients and assess both patient acute pain and clinical risk factors.