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When Pain Management Turns to Addiction
Source: Delaware County Times
11/23/2009
The Delaware County Rural Healthcare Alliance made a day long seminar possible for approximately forty participants who learned a tremendous amount of information about pain management. The seminar was facilitated by the Cornell Cooperative Extension (CCE) of Delaware County and was held in the Countryside Care Nursing Home facility in Delhi.
The morning session began with an introduction by Jeanne Darling, Executive Director for the CCE who briefly explained what the Rural Healthcare Alliance is. Darling stated that Alliance is made up of people representing several different county departments, local hospitals and nursing homes, the American Cancer Society, Hospice and consumer residents; those people who use health services in the county and wish to have a voice in decision making processes relating to health care. The Alliance has a mission to bring together people from all departments and organizations to address issues that impact other services, communicate about healthcare needs within individual communities and share ideas to pool resources for common good.
Darling introduced the first key speaker, Alan Wilmarth of United Health Services Hospitals where he is the Administrative Director of Behavioral Health. Wilmarth currently is responsible for a medically managed detoxification program, an inpatient rehabilitation program, an outpatient substance abuse treatment program, three inpatient psychiatric units, a comprehensive psychiatric emergency program, a methadone treatment program, an outpatient mental health clinic and a drug abuse prevention program. Somehow within this schedule, Wilmarth was able to address this group of participants about understanding addiction. With a power point illustration of the brain, Wilmarth explained where in the brain drugs take effect, the pathway and how addiction takes place, how tolerance and dependence to medications takes place in relation to the brains reward center.
The next key speaker was Pat Foley, Board Certified in both Pharmacotherapy and Psychiatry by the Board of Pharmaceutical Specialties. Foley has special interests in pain control and conducted many lectures in professional arenas on the topic. He is an adjunct professor of pharmacy practices for Wilkes University School for Pharmacy and for Broome Community College's Chemical Dependency Counseling program. As most of the participants in the seminar were in the health care professions or social services fields, Foley's presentation on defining who the chronic pain patient is, what pain is and the problems associated with pain control.
For many people in chronic pain, the adverse effects of pain killers can begin new health battles on top of the issues that were causing the initial pain. For health care providers, family members and social workers, there is a constant monitoring that needs to take place relating to levels of pain and levels of potential addiction. Learning how to evaluate the symptoms and develop an awareness of a patients pain were just a few of the points that Foley spoke about.
Following lunch, Executive Director of the Delaware County Alcohol and Drug Abuse Council David Ramsey was introduced. Ramsey explained some of the avenues that his work takes him before a Question and Answer session opened under his moderation. Attendees had plenty of questions, some very specific to a patient while other questions related to the influences of government decision making.
The Final key speaker of the day was Dr Pat Dwyer who represented the Catskill Area Hospice and Palliative Care. Dwyer is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Medical Oncology and Hematology. Dwyer had an intriguing presentation where he interjected slides and dialog with photos of the canal systems, of which he is very knowledgeable. Perhaps knowing that his audience may be on information overload, he gave the peoples' brains brief intermissions with slides of canal systems and how they work.
The pain management workshop was a wonderful experience for participants as they gained a greater understanding of how pain killing drugs work, who takes them on a regular basis and what to look for regarding addictions.
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