Pain represents a major crisis in today's healthcare environment with over 70 million Americans experiencing chronic pain each year. Poor management of pain has been linked to reduced quality of life and patient satisfaction of care. During hospitalization, inadequate management of pain leads to longer length of stay and higher readmission rates, resulting in overall higher healthcare costs. Pain places a heavy financial burden on society and is a leading cause of disability and lost work days.

Adequate pain management requires clinicians to make rational decisions regarding analgesic selection, dosing, titration, and administration. A thorough understanding of pain pathophysiology is essential to guide clinical decision-making. Despite the availability of effective analgesics, several barriers to adequate pain management continue to exist. These barriers include failure to assess scope of pain, concerns for abuse, fear of adverse events, and a lack of knowledge about pain and analgesics.

Healthcare providers must recognize the impact of pain on their patients and advance their efforts to better manage pain. Pharmacists, as part of a interdisciplinary team, can play a leading role in these efforts to address the current practice gaps.

EDUCATIONAL DESIGN
This interactive Initiative is designed to incorporate a multifaceted-activities approach in order to build the skills and competencies of health-system pharmacists and to facilitate application of these competencies in clinical practice. Health-system pharmacists will have the opportunity to participate in the live activity followed by an online tutorial series with cases and Internet Point of Care.

As health-system pharmacists attempt to implement principles and strategies learned, they will continue to have questions regarding how to incorporate them into clinical practice. Therefore, through Internet Point of Care activity, participants will have access to resources necessary to search for answers to their specific clinical questions