Published June 05, 2019 
10 Days Left to Pledge Your Support for Opioid Education
The misuse of opioids, including prescription drugs, continues to devastate lives and communities throughout the country. Following AACN’s commitment to the National Academy of Medicine’s Action Collaborative on Countering the U.S. Opioid Epidemic, we are asking all member schools to complete two actions by June 15:
First, pledge now to address the opioid crisis on behalf of your school of nursing.
Second, complete the opioid education survey.
The information and survey will help highlight the national trends in opioid education across member schools. Data collected will allow us to assess the impact of AACN’s partnership with the White House which began in 2015 and resulted in over 200 nursing schools pledging to teach the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain to APRN students.
Inter-Agency’s Report on Pain Management Adds Provider-Neutral Language
On May 30, the Pain Management Best Practices Inter-Agency Task Force passed and released to the public the final report on recommendations for acute and chronic pain management. In April, AACN submitted comments in response to the draft report’s physician-centric language, recommending that the Task Force update the language to be inclusive of APRNs and RNs. In addition, AACN also commented to amend credentialing requirements to include APRNs and qualified practitioners and support a multidisciplinary reimbursement model.
Although the final report still refers to physicians as the primary provider in condition-specific treatment plans (see pg. 28, Gap 1: Recommendation 1A, 1C), the recommendations were revised to be inclusive of all clinicians who treat chronic pain, establish criteria for properly training clinicians, and support reimbursement models for a multidisciplinary team. Read the full report here.
NAM Action Collaborative Commits to Reverse Clinician Burnout
On May 28-29, AACN participated in the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) Action Collaborative on Clinician Well-Being and Resilience meeting in Chicago. The collaborative is comprised of more than 180 organizations committed to reversing the trends in clinician burnout. This two-day meeting covered three overarching priorities to achieve well-being: raising the visibility of clinician anxiety, burnout, depression, stress, and suicide; improving the baseline understanding of the challenges to clinician well-being; and advancing evidence-based, multidisciplinary solutions to improve health care by caring for the caregiver.
To learn more, visit nam.edu/clinicianwellbeing and follow the conversation on Twitter using the hashtag #ClinicianWellBeing.