You Don’t Need to Be a Pro to Start
- PainRx
- May 12
- 2 min read
I took a yoga class last week, and there was a line in the class description that caught my eye:
“You don’t need to be flexible to take this class.”
If you think about why they put that disclaimer there, the instructor probably got the same question over and over:
“I’m not flexible AT ALL! Is this class really for me?”/ “I can barely touch my toes—I don’t think I can do this.”/ “My body’s not flexible. I’ll just end up super sore.”
Sound familiar?
(And by the way—I made those up 👻. But they don’t feel far off right?)
As a pharmacist who teaches students and residents about pain medication management, I’ve noticed that the apprehension around learning pain management is very similar. Here are some things I’ve heard:
“This is way too difficult/ complex/ challenging/ abstract.”
“I don’t think I could talk to patients the way you do.”
“I only had one or two lectures about this back in school.”
To be honest, when I started my second year residency in pain management, I remember wondering when I’d ever be ready to handle buprenorphine. I thought I had to master everything about conventional opioids first. But you know how I actually got started?
I started out reading about the pharmacology of buprenorphine. Just the basics.
The truth is: being a pro often just means you're solid with the fundamentals—and you’ve got a few extra tricks up your sleeve. If you practice the basics daily and aim to improve each time, that is the process of becoming a pro. Here are a few basics I think matter in pain medication management:
Opioid conversion
Non opioid optimization
Reflective listening
Thorough chart review
Pick one area and just start practicing. And if you’re not sure where to begin, try one of these:
Pull up an online opioid calculator and look at the math
Look up the dosing of gabapentin and duloxetine in your drug reference
Ask a patient how much acetaminophen they are taking and offer some counseling
By the way, if you’re looking to improve how you communicate with patients about pain, I’m co-hosting a workshop on June 7th with my friend Michelle Marikos. We’d love to have you there👇🏻:
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