PRACTICE PARTNER
Filling a Gap in Opioid Education
BY STUART FOXMAN
The Ontario Pain Management Resources is a group of health system agencies intent on ensuring physicians have the support
they need to feel more confident caring for patients with pain. Over the last several issues of Dialogue, we have taken a closer
look at the different contributions of the health system agencies involved. In this issue, the last in the series, we examine the
online educational resources available.
T
o work best, the approach,
formula, amount and timing
have to be right. That’s true for
medication and education.
Among the continuing professional devel-
opment (CPD) programs on opioids are two
online offerings from McMaster University
and the University of Toronto. They fill a
need, and not just in increasing reach through
e-Learning modules. Many clinicians face
challenges in reducing the risks and harms of
opioids, and simply managing patients with
chronic pain.
“These are major holes in medical curricula,
right from the beginning of medical school,”
says Dr. Abhimanyu Sud of the University of
Toronto’s Faculty of Medicine.
Dr. Sud is an Assistant Professor in the
Department of Family and Community
Medicine, and Director of the Safer Opioid
Prescribing program in CPD. Why the rela-
tive lack of emphasis on chronic pain educa-
tion? Dr. Sud says the topic doesn’t align with
how doctors typically think.
“Chronic pain falls by the wayside because
it doesn’t easily fit the biomedical model in
the way diseases do,” he says. “Pathways of
pain are understudied, and don’t account very
well for the experience of patients. Our ten-
dency is to focus on the larger model of how
health and diseases happen.”
Perhaps the biggest knowledge gap? “The
complicated intersection between chronic
pain and opioid use disorder,” says Dr. Jen-
nifer Wyman, Academic Lead for McMaster’s
Opioids Clinical Primer project.
She continues, “We want to help clinicians
assess their patients more carefully, and recog-
ISSUE 3, 2019 DIALOGUE
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