An examination of the perceived impact of a continuing interprofessional education experience on opiate prescribing practices

ABSTRACT

Chronic pain is increasingly recognized as a public health problem. We assessed the effectiveness of a multi-modal, interprofessional educational approach aimed at empowering healthcare professionals to make deliberative changes, especially in opiate prescribing practices. Education activities included enduring webcasts, regional interprofessional roundtable events, and state-level conference presentations within targeted Kentucky and West Virginia regions of the United States. Over 1,000 participants accessed the various activities. For the live events, the largest groups reached included nurses (38.1%), nurse practitioners (31.2%), and physicians (22.1%). In addition to our reach, higher levels of educational effectiveness were measured, specifically, learner’s intentions to change practice patterns, confidence in meeting patient’s needs, and knowledge of pain management guidelines. The majority of the conference (58%) and roundtable (69%) participants stated they intend to make a practice change in one or more areas of chronic pain patient management in post-event evaluation. Differences in pre- and post-activity responses on the measures of confidence and knowledge, with additional comparison to a control population who were not in attendance, were analyzed using non-parametric tests of significance. While neither activity produced significant changes in confidence from pre-activity, participants were more confident post-activity than their control group peers. There were significant changes in knowledge for both live event and webcast participants. Impactful chronic pain continuing the education that emphasizes collaborative care is greatly needed; these results show that the approaches taken here can impact learner’s knowledge and confidence, and hold potential for creating change in how opioid prescribing is managed.

KEYWORDS:

• Interprofessional education
• Organization learning and change
• Chronic pain
• Program planning/curriculum development
• Pain management

Acknowledgments

We wish to thank our partners: University of Kentucky (UK) with the Kentucky Ambulatory Network (KAN), West Virginia University (WVU) and the WV Practice-Based Research Network, and Kentucky All Schedule Prescriptions Electronic Reporting Agency (KASPER), Kentucky College of Osteopathic Medicine, Kentucky and West Virginia Area Health Education Centers (AHEC).

Declaration of Interest

The authors report no conflicts of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This grant was funded by the Independent Grants for Learning and Change through the Pfizer Consortium (Award Number: 16364911).