For this Assignment, you will consider the areas you aim to focus on to gain practical experience as an advanced practice nurse. Then, you will develop a Practicum Experience Plan (PEP) containing the objectives you will fulfill in order to achieve your aims. For this practicum experience, be sure to develop goals and objectives that allow you to synthesize knowledge and skills related to assessment, diagnosis, and treatment planning. 

As an advanced practice nurse, you will likely experience patient encounters with complex comorbidities. For example, consider a female patient who is pregnant who also presents with hypertension, diabetes, and has a recent tuberculosis infection. How might the underlying pathophysiology of these conditions affect the pharmacotherapeutics you might recommend to help address your patient’s health needs? What education strategies might you recommend for ensuring positive patient health outcomes?

For this Discussion, you will be assigned a patient case study and will consider how to address the patient’s current drug therapy plans. You will then suggest recommendations on how to revise these drug therapy plans to ensure effective, safe, and quality patient care for positive patient health outcomes.

Post a brief description of your patient’s health needs from the patient case study you assigned. Be specific. Then, explain the type of treatment regimen you would recommend for treating your patient, including the choice or pharmacotherapeutics you would recommend and explain why. Be sure to justify your response. Explain a patient education strategy you might recommend for assisting your patient with the management of their health needs. Be specific and provide examples.

To Prepare:

• Review the Resources for this module and reflect on the different health needs and body systems presented.
• Your Instructor will assign you a complex case study to focus on for this Discussion.
• Consider how you will practice critical decision making for prescribing appropriate drugs and treatment to address the complex patient health needs in the patient case study you selected.

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Unit 11 Discussion Medications for Pain Management. 800w. 4 references. Due 11-01-23

1. Why are many parties, including the U.S. Government, concerned about the use of opioids for pain management?

2. Provide input on the following article “America’s opioid crisis: the need for an integrated public health approach” https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7286889/

3. Which mental health disorders are commonly associated with patients who also need pain relief? ——–I believe this is depression and anxiety.
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/pain-anxiety-and-depression. https://www.healthcentral.com/pain-management/chronic-pain-and-mental-health

4. What is an MME and how is it calculated?

Responses need to address all components of the question, demonstrate critical thinking and analysis and include peer-reviewed journal evidence to support the student’s position.

Please be sure to validate your opinions and ideas with in-text citations and corresponding references in APA format.

Please review the rubric to ensure that your response meets the criteria.

Medications for Pain Management Pain relievers in the opioid class work by binding to specific cells known as opioid receptors in the brain and nervous system. Opioid drugs dull pain perception and heighten pleasure when they bind to opioid receptors within brain cells, activated when the blood reaches the brain. That which makes opiate painkillers so effective also makes them potentially harmful. Many organizations are concerned about opioids because while at lesser dosages, they may make patients sleepy (Townsend et al., 2021). In more significant quantities, they can cause breathing and heart rate slowdowns, resulting in death. Additionally, the pleasurable effects of opioids might make the patients crave more of them, which can be a dangerous spiral into addiction. By taking medications as prescribed, patients can lessen the likelihood of experiencing adverse effects. Patients should inform their healthcare providers of all their drugs and supplements (Mark & Paris, 2019). Significant evidence also links chronic pain to mental health issues and substance dependence. However, the exact nature of the connection, particularly in terms of causation, is sometimes unclear. According to Slawek et al. (2022), pain can increase mental health difficulties such as anxiety, difficulty sleeping, depression, and panic disorders, while stress and depression can make chronic pain severe. Pain can also make it more difficult to sleep. Opioid overdose most commonly causes respiratory depression, which can cause severe consequences or even death. When a patient is close to a potentially harmful threshold, medical professionals look at their daily morphine equivalent doses (MED),which is the sum of the MMEs of all opioids they are likely to take within 24 hours. The Morphine Milligram equivalent (MME) value is the relative potency of a dose of opioids compared to morphine (Dasgupta, This study source was downloaded by 100000769192234 from CourseHero.com on 10-22-2023 14:20:45 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/184520553/Unit-11-Discussion-Pain-Managementdocx/ 2 2021). MME aims to aid physicians in making safe and appropriate judgments when considering modifications to existing opiate treatment plans. The MME converts multiple different opiate doses into a uniform number based on the strength of morphine using a universal conversion factor defined by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Every prescription is given in MME daily according to the CDC conversion factor, dosage, and the number of days' worth of medication. Each opiate dose a patient takes per day is converted to milligrams of morphine using a morphine-based conversion factor, and the daily average rate is then used to determine the MME. This study source was downloaded by 100000769192234 from CourseHero.com on 10-22-2023 14:20:45 GMT -05:00 https://www.coursehero.com/file/184520553/Unit-11-Discussion-Pain-Managementdocx/ 3 References Dasgupta, N. (2021). Verbatim MME calculation methods from studies cited in the CDC pain guideline identified from a previous methods review. FDA U.S. Food and Drug Administration. https://doi.org/10.17615/95wd-3150 Mark, T. L., & Parish, W. (2019). Opioid medication discontinuation and risk of adverse opioidrelated health care events. Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, 101(1), 58-63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsat.2019.05.001 Slawek, D. E., Syed, M., Cunningham, C. O., Zhang, C., Ross, J., Herman, M., Sohler, N., Minami, H., Levin, F. R., Arnsten, J. H., & Starrels, J. L. (2022). Pain catastrophizing and mental health phenotypes in adults with refractory chronic pain: A latent class analysis. Journal of Psychiatric Research, 145(1), 102-110. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2021.12.001 Townsend, T., Cerda, M., Bohnert, A., Legisetty, P., & Haffajee, R. L. (2021). CDC guideline for opioid prescribing associated with reduced dispensing to certain patients with chronic pain: Study examines the impact of CDC guidelines for opioid prescribing. Health Affairs, 40(11), 1766-1775. https://doi.org/10.1377/hlthaff.2021.00135