A Single Point of Access for frontline practitioners
PAINWeekEnd Tampa 2019 | Saturday 6/29/19
This is a 1-day meeting and will provide 6 CE/CME credits.
Practicing Healthcare Professionals: $129
In order to maintain the clinical nature of the conference, nonclinicians—including, but not limited to, office managers, billing specialists, receptionists, and administrative staff; guests, spouses, friends, and/or family members—may not attend PAINWeekEnd.
Unfortunately, we do not have discounts available on hotel rooms. Please contact the hotel directly should you require accommodations.
Renaissance Tampa International Plaza Hotel
4200 Jim Walter Blvd
Tampa, FL 33607
Get Directions using Google Maps
Faculty and courses are subject to change. Please refer to the online agenda below for the most recent course descriptions.
To view the agenda below, click on the + sign next to the day of the conference to expand the conference agenda. Click on the + signs within the agenda to view the course description, UAN number, and AANP pharmacology credits.
*not certified for credit
Coffee will be served.
The CDC guidelines have caused controversy and spurred heated discussion. Produced with a paucity of evidence based medicine, they were never evaluated and iterated in the manner of more appropriate guidelines. In this course, we will examine the guidelines and their effect on practitioners—primary care physicians, pain specialists, etc—and chronic pain noncancer patients as well as some chronic cancer patients. Many functioning patients have had their opioid dosages diminished, either in concert with their physician or forcibly, without any say in the matter. This, along with a marked reduction in the amount of legal opioid medications that can be produced, has led to significant unintended consequences: practitioners are leaving the field; some refuse to even prescribe any opioids, mostly due to fear of overregulation; once functional patients are being abandoned by the medical field; patients are searching for something to return them to functionality, which can lead to overdose and death, particularly from heroin and illicit fentanyl. Indeed, the opioid crisis has now become the heroin and fentanyl crisis. During this presentation, solutions, and the changes necessary to bring them about, will be discussed.
Breakfast will be served.
Sponsored by Legally Mine.
The gabapentinoids are a popular class of medications among prescribers for use in chronic pain and various other neurological conditions. In fact, prescription rates for both gabapentin and pregabalin have increased in the United States and other countries in recent years. However, these medications have a street value to a newer niche of users, including patients taking them at megadoses to enhance the effects of other psychotropic drugs, and other patients taking them to manage or mitigate opioid withdrawal symptoms and possibly even opioid cravings. While pregabalin is already classified as a controlled substance, gabapentin does not yet carry this classification. In response to rising abuse, various states and regulatory bodies are considering changes to enhance patient safety and protect the provider’s license. Learn what changes you should make to your practice, if any, in light of the growing abuse of gabapentinoids and how to identify patients potentially abusing them.
Few would question the severity of the prescription opioid crisis of the early years of this millennium, the causes of which were myriad. Undoubtedly, society needed to address the crisis in an aggressive manner. Unfortunately, the manner in which the problem was addressed has been a classic example of “overkill,” resulting in a war on opioid analgesia, the patients who require opioid treatment, and the providers who have continued to prescribe. Although many have cast blame on the 2016 CDC Opioid Prescribing Guideline, it was not necessarily the Guideline itself that caused so much suffering, but rather its weaponization. Irrespective, patients have been the “collateral damage” in this war on opioids. This presentation will address the imperative of physicians exercising more thorough and consistent opioid risk mitigation in order to avoid opioid analgesia from becoming further “legislated away,” as well as the imperative of those who are “pro-opioid” and “anti-opioid” to agree on a rational middle ground that is more “pro-patient.”
Lunch will be served.
Sponsored by Emergent BioSolutions.
During this course, we will go over the clinical symptomatology of migraine in a number of its various forms, as well as the pathophysiology of migraine. Also examined will be the acute as well as prophylactic treatment of migraine using evidence based criteria.
Refreshments will be served.
Sponsored by Paradigm Healthcare.
The shift away from opioid use in medication management for chronic pain has changed the dynamic of opioid prescribing in many ways. Now, more than ever, prescribers are under the microscope regarding selection of opioid and dose as well as clinical documentation and appropriate action based on findings during the patient visit. Risks of opioids outweighing the benefits due to lack of effect, adverse effects, or aberrant behavior are just some of the possible justifications to consider opioid tapering. There are other instances when there is outright dangerous or illegal behavior that justifies discontinuation of opioids. This lecture will review different patient situations and discuss when to taper or discontinue opioids and how to implement the change in opioid therapy.
Medical, and recreational, marijuana serve as sources of great confusion to patients and clinicians alike. A culture of “neuromysticism” around medical marijuana has arisen, leaving patients and clinicians alike confused regarding what constitutes “medical” marijuana. A part of this confusion is related to the poor quality of the available research on safety and efficacy, which are due, in part, to the restrictive scheduling of the drug. This lecture will focus on what we know, and what we don’t know, about the efficacy and safety of medical cannabinoids. Specific recommendations regarding the safest and most effective use of medical marijuana as part of a pain management armamentarium will be provided.
To accompany and enrich your experience at the PAINWeekEnd conference, be sure to attend one or more of the sponsored programs, which are scheduled during breakfast, lunch, and afternoon "Brain Food" time slots in the schedule. There is NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to attend these program sessions!