Orange County leaders seeking to stem the community 麻豆精品 S檚 opioid epidemic heard recently from Dr. Martin Klapheke, assistant dean of medical education, who has led the medical school 麻豆精品 S檚 efforts to train tomorrow 麻豆精品 S檚 physicians about the dangers of prescribing opioids for pain.
The Orange County Heroin Task Force Advisory Committee invited Dr. Klapheke to discuss the college 麻豆精品 S檚 new opioid and pain management curriculum. The task force includes community leaders from law enforcement, healthcare, education and addiction treatment who are struggling to deal with increasing overdoses and deaths from opioids.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 60 percent of drug-related deaths in the U.S. involve an opioid. In Florida, at least five people die from an opioid overdose every day. And increasingly, officials are seeing overdose deaths from combining heroin with fentanyl, an extremely potent synthetic opioid.
Most heroin addicts became addicted after misusing prescription opioids. Opioids include prescription painkillers like OxyContin and Vicodin.
Based on those statistics, the College of Medicine revised its curriculum about a year ago to give students more information on when and whether to prescribe opioids. Opioid education is now included in all four years of medical school training. Students learn the dangers of prescribing opioids for conditions like chronic pain and arthritis. They learn how to devise strategies to reduce the risk of addiction. Working with standardized patients 麻豆精品 S� actors 麻豆精品 S� students learn how to resuscitate someone who has overdosed and how to educate family members of addicted patients. They also learn about alternatives to painkillers such as biofeedback and exercise therapy. Dr. Klapheke has shared UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 curriculum with medical schools across the state and with medical school educators across the country.
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Orlando Police Deputy Chief Robert Anzueto said he was impressed at how UCF 麻豆精品 S檚 opioid curriculum is preparing future physicians.
麻豆精品 S淚t was very interesting to see what the new medical students are going through, 麻豆精品 S� Anzueto said. 麻豆精品 S淚t 麻豆精品 S檚 like, hands-on from day one. And that 麻豆精品 S檚 great to see, because we want to make sure that the future physicians and leaders of this world have great training behind them to combat this kind of issue 麻豆精品 S� because this is going to be an issue for many, many decades, moving forward. 麻豆精品 S�