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Brett Armstrong, COM '22 being interviewed with the local news during the Opioid talk with Gordon Smith, Esq.
How was the opioid talk you attended with Gordon Smith, Esq. different from your opioid education as a student?
I'm an ER tech at SMHC (Southern Maine Health Center), and we've started to see some cross contamination of different substances and poly substances. [Mr. Smith] was really talking about Maine, and then also some national trends, but it was with a Maine focus. As a student, we of course learn opioids as a medication, how they act physiologically, their indication, side effects, all that pharmacological information. We've had some further education through AHEC (Maine Area Health Education Center). For example, for the CUPS program (Care for the Underserved Pathways), we had the Maine Access Project come in, and they gave a Narcam training. As far as the college education, it's been more about the pharmacology, the medical aspects of it, on overdoses, and why we need to limit opioid use.
I think with Mr. Smith's lecture it was much more looking at the population health approach, strategies beyond just limiting opioids, to try and identify the public health reasons why the crisis began, continues and what our role is. Now there are other drugs that have come back, like methamphetamine for example, in the Portland area, and cocaine's another one. As physicians, both future and current ones, we have a role in dispensing and prescribing it, and a lot of it does get onto the streets and is dealt with illegally, and not through prescriptions, but medical providers initially prescribed it. I think just the awareness that we need to make every effort we can to limit its effects and then hopefully reverse it, but being aware that this issue is now beyond just opioids, and how we can communicate with our patients that may be dealing with addiction disorders and use disorders. It's really about connecting with the person.
What would you say are the three major takeaways from the event?
One, that the opioid crisis is a public health or population health problem… that it's no longer just physicians over prescribing, and patients becoming addicted. It has now become something that we're seeing throughout the communities and beyond just what physicians initially did. We all have a hand in it, and we all can try to help identify people that may be struggling with it, or people that may be more vulnerable. Second is that a lot of our medical practices can directly influence these kind of crises. For