Educational Activities Archives

This module reviews introductory information regarding pain, different types of pain, acute versus chronic pain, and how to perform a pain evaluation. It describes a comprehensive pain assessment integrating a socio-psycho-biological approach and identifies the impact of psychosocial factors, including mental health, on the pain experience.

The learner is presented with foundational information on pain treatment, with a focus on chronic pain. The module reviews material on the sociopsychobiological model of pain and how that impacts treatment approaches, the evidence for pharmacological and non-pharmacological therapies for pain, and the recommended strategies for managing chronic pain.

Participants who engage in this activity will understand opioid pharmacology and evidence on benefits and harms of opioid therapy for chronic pain. Additionally, participants learn risk factors for opioid overdose and OUD, risk assessment of patients for long-term opioid therapy, methods for mitigating risks of opioid therapy, and approaches for discontinuing or tapering opioids.

This activity focuses on the assessment and management of pain using multimodal treatments that reduce the reliance on opioid analgesics. Learners are introduced to information on the principles, mechanisms, and frameworks relevant to multimodal analgesia, with an emphasis on non-pharmacological techniques and non-opioid medications. Applications of multimodal treatments for pain to various clinical settings are reviewed, as well as relevant case studies for the treatment of acute and sub-acute pain.

Participants who engage in this activity learn to identify components of a neurobiological framework/explanatory model for patients with chronic pain and opioid use disorder, discuss complexities involved in differentiating opioid use disorder from chronic pain, and describe how to perform an opioid use disorder evaluation for a patient with chronic pain seen in primary care.

In this module participants review how to identify the main principles of pain treatment in opioid use disorder and to describe how these principles are applied to the treatment of acute pain as well as chronic non-terminal, non-cancer pain in OUD. Specifically, participants will learn to manage opioid withdrawal and acute pain in patients with OUD during hospitalization with and without receiving concomitant MOUD. Participants will examine strategies in formulating a multimodal pain plan for chronic pain in patients with OUD.