Educational Media Reviews Online

Issues related to pain management, substance abuse, and drug diversion within the health professions have become increasingly important in the last decade with an ever-expanding body of knowledge. This group of videos is a good place to start for individuals who have no basic knowledge in the area and want to be exposed to a brief introduction. Pain Management or Drug Abuse is a tool designed for drug diversion investigators. It looks at clarifying the issue of whether some practitioner’s prescribing practices are effective pain management or drug abuse. It provides additional information on what constitutes good prescribing practices related to opiod and non-narcotic pain medication and makes references to state guidelines/protocols in this area. A checklist of red flags related to prescribing practice is also provided. Thwarting the Illicit Drug Seeker [dental professionals] and Preventing Drug Diversion [both physicians and pharmacists] have similar content. Each begins with a discussion of drug seekers and creates three categories, legitimate, entrepreneurial and addicted, and details the behavior for each. Since the goal is to deter the behavior of the entrepreneurial and addicted drug seeker, each video provides a series of deterrent guidelines specific to the noted health profession. The guidelines are very common sense and practically oriented, such as ‘confirm the patients identity’, but in a busy practice environment many of these common-sense guidelines are overlooked or not followed. Both Helping the Impaired Pharmacist and Helping the Impaired Physician have similar content such as signs of professional impairment – over performance, work discrepancies, and inappropriate behavior. They offer additional information on the impact of substance abuse in both the work and family environment ranging from unfocused conflict, family enabling, to potential health effects on patients related to medical errors. Each video emphasizes the importance of and the process for professional intervention for the impaired practitioner – usually with a high rate of return to work success.

Each video comes with a companion study guide that greatly elaborates on the video content.