The Authors’ Own Words: Training Internal Medicine Residents to Manage Chronic Pain and Prescription Opioid Misuse

The Authors’ Own Words: We ask authors to describe their impressions regarding the implications of their accepted work, how their findings will change practice, and what is noteworthy about the work.

Training Internal Medicine Residents to Manage Chronic Pain and Prescription Opioid Misuse

Allison L. Ruff, MD; Daniel P. Alford, MD, MPH; Robert Butler; & J. Henry Isaacson, MD

Substance Abuse Vol. 38, Iss. 2, 2017

“Residents often lack the preparation to manage patients on chronic opioids for chronic pain in an outpatient setting. Our study discusses a teaching intervention for Internal Medicine residents that was implemented within the time constraints of a busy residency program and was able to improve resident confidence in skills managing patients with chronic pain, skills identifying which patients with chronic pain have developed an opioid use disorder, and understanding of how to monitor for benefit vs harm in patient on chronic opioids. It is the authors’ hope that other programs can utilize a similar curricular model to improve these same indices at their programs.”