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  • About
    • Why We Matter
    • Our Team
    • Contact Us
  • Learning Center
    • The AD Archives
    • The AD Core Toolkit >
      • Opioid Safety Toolkit
      • HIV Prevention Toolkit
    • MATERIALS LIBRARY
  • News & Media
    • Blog
    • Podcast Series
    • E-Newsletter
  • Detailing Directory
    • Partners by Location
  • EVENTS SERIES
    • Training Series
    • CONFERENCE SERIES
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The DETAILS BLOG

Capturing Stories from the Field: Reflections, Challenges, & Best Practices

Prioritizing Local Needs, Partnering to Save Lives: Detailing for the Opioid Crisis

7/23/2018

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Director’s Letter: Mike Fischer, MD, MS
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The opioid crisis has been recognized as a major national public health problem, but it actually reflects a collection of many thousands of local crises playing out in individual cities and counties. Each region faces a distinctive set of challenges, driven by economic and social factors, local medical practice patterns, political environment and pressures, and many other considerations.

​Identifying and implementing effective solutions to address the opioid crisis requires developing an understanding of how these individual challenges interact, and what strategies are most effective in specific situations--one of which is academic detailing.

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The NaRCAD team is partnering with the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) and NACCHO (the National Association of City and County Health Officials) on an exciting pilot program working with local health officials to develop customized interventions to reduce opioid overdose and death. Four sites experiencing significant public health problems related to opioids were selected: Boone County, Kentucky; Bell County, West Virginia; Manchester, New Hampshire; and Dayton, Ohio.

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Public health officials at each site identified a wide range of local stakeholders to participate in developing a community action plan and recruited trainees to complete NaRCAD’s academic detailing training course, which we customized to address the unique challenges that each community faces. ​ We also developed a specialized online toolkit for these sites, including discussion boards, local resources, and printable resources.

PictureA trainee from Bell County, Kentucky, delivers a key message.
We traveled to each site in March and April of this year, facilitating hands-on trainings in the techniques of academic detailing in alignment with the CDC prescribing guidelines. Trainees came from diverse backgrounds, including pharmacists, nurses, public health officials, and students in the health professions, including pharmacy students, dental students, and medical school students.

​Plans for implementing AD varied by site depending on the local health care environment; some sites focused more heavily on appropriate prescribing of opioids by clinicians, while others prioritized increasing referral rates for patients with opioid use disorder (OUD), including access to medication-assisted treatment (MAT). 

PicturePracticing a concise introduction in Manchester, New Hampshire.
As the AD trainees at each pilot site continue their work in the field, we’ll learn more about how these diverse strategies succeed, and how we can support adaptations to make academic detailing more impactful. This important collaboration has allowed us to form invaluable partnerships with CDC and NACCHO, leveraging national resources to improve local responses to this epidemic through plans that respond more precisely to local needs and priorities.

We’re excited for this pilot program to serve as a model for future opioid safety AD interventions, and we’ll be providing updates here on the blog. ​In the meantime, tell us: what's happening in your local community around the opioid crisis? Sound off in the comments section below, and let us know if you think clinician-facing education could be a strategy that would improve outcomes for your community. And join us for our next training and our terrific annual conference to learn more about this and other exciting AD  projects.

-Mike

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Biography.
Michael Fischer, MD, MS |
Director of NaRCAD
Dr. Fischer is a general internist, pharmacoepidemiologist, and health services researcher. He is an Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard and a clinically active primary care physician and educator at Brigham & Women’s Hospital. With extensive experience in designing and evaluating interventions to improve medication use, he has published numerous studies demonstrating potential gains from improved prescribing. Read more.

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Fostering Change within a System: Detailing to Improve Opioid Safety in a Rural County

6/29/2018

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Guest Blogger: Monica Mais, MSN, FNP
Family Nurse Practioner/Academic Detailer
California Opioid Safety Network, Fairchild Medical Clinic
NaRCAD Training Alumnus

​In 2011, I went from 15 years as an Emergency Room nurse to a new role as a Family Nurse Practitioner in a rural healthcare setting. I couldn’t believe the amounts of prescribed opioids that were coming out of our little clinic—the average chronic pain patient was receiving 240 Morphine Equivalents/day (MEDs), and many of these patients had been receiving these medications for years without oversight. In 2013 I introduced an evidence-based protocol and policy for safe prescribing of Opiates for Chronic Non-Cancer Pain (CNCP). ​

​Within 2 years, our average CNCP patient was taking less than 120 MEDs, and there were 40% less prescriptions coming out of our clinic. As of this year, the average CNCP patient takes not more than 90 MED’s, and there is a significantly reduced supply of illicit opioids, due to our frequent monitoring for aberrant behaviors. We had a success!
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However, patients who could not obtain opiates from our clinic quickly moved on to the clinic across town. This influx of opiate seeking patients was reason for concern from those receiving clinics. My colleagues and I opened our doors to neighboring clinics and providers and began sharing our policies and successes. Many other area clinics started adapting our policies to their own practice, reducing their opiate prescribing as well. ​
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We formed a coalition called Siskiyou Against Rx Abuse (SARA), and based on our previous successes, we were all shocked to see data showing our county was among the highest opioid prescriptions per capita in California, and had a high overdose rate per capita, despite our efforts. Clearly, more needed to be done! Our coalition facilitator, Maggie Shepard, RN, along with our medical director, Dr. Sam Rabinowitz, and myself were all invited to attend training to become Academic Detailers in San Francisco with the San Francisco Department of Public Health, a partner with NaRCAD, the National Resource Center for Academic Detailing. 

​We did scripting and role-playing throughout the training, learning the important social marketing and communication skills needed to conduct a personalized visit with a provider where the goal would be to change behaviors to continue to promote safe opioid prescribing, Naloxone, and Buprenorphine out to providers in our area.
During the training, I was videotaped during a practice role-play, which was very helpful, as it reminded me to speak more slowly, and to organize my key messages and talking points. After the training, getting our detailing program into the field involved a step-by-step process. 
Here are important things to consider that have worked well for my detailing process:
  • Send a letter. The first thing I did was sending a letter out to my list of assigned providers to whom I’d be conducting 1:1 academic detailing visits. The letter introduced myself, gave brief description of my objective and my contact information.
  • Make calls and set up appointments.  A few days after sending the letter, I started calling the provider’s office managers, asking to schedule a time to meet. I was lucky to get three providers, who were also acquaintances, to meet with, and since they were “easy wins”, it was a good way to practice my new social marketing skills.
  • Cold calling in person. Many of the other providers were unavailable or “too busy,” so I took my good-natured personality on the road and started what I call “office-bombing.” I found that if I just showed up early and started conversing with the staff about the opioid crisis, they were very helpful in allowing me access to meet 1:1 with the provider.
  • Use “we” language as a provider’s ally. Once I was in the "zone" with a provider, I made sure to introduce myself as a fellow provider within our community, making it clear that I was providing a service and simply sharing information relevant to the safe prescribing of opioids.
  • Respect providers’ time. I often asked, “Do you have 5 minutes? Can I just follow you and talk?” Often, providers who “only have 5 minutes” would manage to talk with me for 20-30 minutes.
  • Do your research, and listen without judgment. When detailing to unknown providers, I did my research about their practice, and I was careful to be non-intrusive, non-judgmental, and just listen.
  • Encourage storytelling. Many shared the challenges of working with inherited patient who were already on a fairly high dose of opioids, and needed support in tapering down. For those who disagreed with safe prescribing limits, I emphasized co-prescribing Naloxone, and found that many of these prescribers were more open to becoming X-Waivered, which would allow them to prescribe medication-assisted treatment.  
​I plan to continue AD throughout 2018. I believe we have experiences that we can share to encourage our colleagues to make positive changes in in their prescribing habits. Academic Detailing works due to mutual respect of one another’s experiences, professionalism, and willingness to receive new information—it’s an excellent way to foster change within a system!
​Biography
Monica Mais, MSN, FNP
Family Nurse Practioner/Academic Detailer, Fairchild Medical Clinic
Monica Mais is a Board Certified Family Nurse Practitioner working at an FQHC in Siskiyou County, located in far Northern California on the Oregon border. She is a founding member of Siskiyou Against Rx Abuse, member of the California Opioid Safety Network and an X-Waived prescriber, working with chronic pain and opioid dependent patients. As a former Emergency Room Nurse for 15 years, many of Monica’s shifts involved witnessing overdoses, drug-seeking behavior, violence, desperation, and healthcare worker burnout. It had been escalating every year to its current crisis level, and Monica wanted to be part of the solution to this heartbreaking epidemic. Questions on this piece for Monica Mais? Contact her at mmais@fairchildmed.org, or leave your thoughts in the discussion forum below.
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​NaRCAD is a program of the Division of Pharmacoepidemiology & Pharmacoeconomics [DoPE], Department of Medicine at Brigham & Women's Hospital.
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