Educational Activities Archives

Lab testing in the assessment of substance use disorders may involve many different substrates, though urine drug testing (UDT) dominates clinical practice. This course is meant to provide a short guide to effective use of lab testing in the treatment of the patient with a substance use disorder, which, to a surprising degree, is often misused or misunderstood. The course describes the clinical role of lab testing to guide treatment and not to be punitive. To properly use and interpret UDT, it reviews common false positives and false negatives that might occur in the immunologic-based first step in UDT. To understand confirmatory gas chromatography/mass spectrometry, it goes on to describe the metabolism of common opioids and benzodiazepines, because the detected substance is often just a downstream metabolite of several possible parent compounds to which the patient was exposed. The course concludes with a discussion of the difference between UDT for clinical purposes versus forensic ones.

Other substance use disorders can often co-occur with opioid use disorder (OUD). These can include benzodiazepines and other tranquilizers, cocaine and stimulants, and cannabis. Alcohol and nicotine are also considered commonly used substances alongside opioids. In this educational activity, these other substances will be reviewed leading to a discussion of principles of diagnosis and evaluation of treatment for each substance by themselves, and in the context of OUD.

Psychiatric pharmacists are advanced practice clinical pharmacists committed to being part of an interdisciplinary team treating substance use disorders, often in combination with serious mental illness. The following SUD toolkits were developed to further the knowledge of pharmacists and other healthcare professionals.

Throughout this document the term “MAT Program” is used to mean the integrated delivery of medication-assisted treatment (MAT) and counseling/behavioral health services rendered for patients struggling with opioid addiction. The MAT Program will require prescribing physician(s)/provider(s) and professionals serving as behavioral health consultants (BHC). For purposes of this document, the prescribing physician/provider is defined as the “MAT Provider.” The BHC function is further defined in the glossary of key terms.

Family support for opioid addiction.