ACOMS Review - Spring 2019 ACOMS Review April 2019 | Page 2

American Dental Society of Anesthesiology’s
Annual Session, April 5 - 6, at a reduced
rate. This will give members an opportunity
to obtain valuable anesthesia continuing
education as part of their educational
experience. The College will have a combined
evening reception with ADSA on Saturday,
April 6, as we kick off our meeting.
Czar” of my division at Emory Healthcare. The
university healthcare system has developed
an opioid stewardship counsel to assess
prescription practices of the doctors and
enhance the current culture of safety in
our institution. Collaboration with other
healthcare specialties on this topic has been
beneficial for all providers. The data we have
been analyzing has stimulated us to create
Our specialty plays an integral role in
safety checks with dosing. The research has
managing the opioid crisis. We must think
also resulted in the question of whether
about developing responsible prescription
we need to provide a reversal agent for
habits when it comes to the use of narcotics
the patient that requires higher dosing of
for managing pain and continuing to
narcotic medications. (Just think, if the patient
promote a culture of safety. Often our patient took all 30 Percocet you prescribed at once,
population is opioid naïve, having their
would they need a reversal agent? That is
first exposure after the removal of wisdom
what could happen if a child got into the
teeth. If we truly understand the physiology,
pills.) Today, our electronic medical record
psychology, and the neuroscience of pain, we system should create alerts for providers. We
may think twice before we write a prescription are also working on integrating our system
that will last longer than 72 hours.
with prescription drug monitoring programs
to make checking on patient narcotic
Some ways we can reduce narcotic
prescriptions seamless, following the example
prescribing and increase safety include the
of other hospital systems in the United States.
following:
We MUST be narcotic gatekeepers for
• Use multimodal pain therapy
patient safety. I challenge you all to think
• Implement ERAS (enhanced recovery after twice before you prescribe. Think: is there
surgery) protocols
a good alternative? I would love to hear
• Develop new non-narcotic pain
your thoughts on this important topic and
medications
look forward to a great Keynote Speech
• Provide appropriate patient counseling of by the Surgeon General next month. Safe
what to expect postoperatively
travels to Santa Fe! See you in the Land of
• Develop convenient places to dispose
Enchantment!
of unused narcotics, thus potentially
providing a safer environment related to
prescription narcotic use.
Stephanie J. Drew, DMD, FACS
President, ACOMS
This has been especially important to me, as I
have been appointed the “Drug Stewardship