Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain: A Quality Improvement Project.

BACKGROUND: Several healthcare providers have failed to follow proper opioid prescribing practices to treat chronic pain in recent years. Therefore, the nation is experiencing an epidemic of opioid addiction, which has destroyed many lives. This quality improvement project aims to assess healthcare providers prescribing practices using the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's guidelines to treat chronic pain. METHOD: The methodology used was the Plan-Do-Study-Act framework. A total of 120 charts were reviewed before the pre and post-implementation of the CDC's guidelines to assess the prescribing practices of health care providers. Also, the QI project follows SQUIRE's 2.0 guidelines to describe the prescribing practices of providers. SQUIRE is a framework that helps researchers report new knowledge on improving patient care in the health care system. The literature review section in this article illuminates current evidence of using opioid guidelines and had provided guidance on how to improve opioids prescribing practices among providers. The guidelines can be retrieved at http://squire-statement.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&PageID=471 OUTCOMES: Using the CDC's guidelines helps to assess the prescribing practices of health care providers, the prescription rates of opioids dropped from 33.3% pre-implementation to 16.7% post-implementation. CONCLUSION: Opioid prescriptions are a significant contributor to the rising opioid epidemic; therefore, educating clinicians about safe prescribing practices is crucial.

COVID-19 Management in Pediatrics.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a deadly global pandemic, with scientific efforts improving our understanding of this novel coronavirus. No proven disease-specific therapies exist, although 2 vaccines have been recently approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration under emergency use authorization, and several others are in development or phase III clinical trial testing. COVID-19 presents in greater severity in the medically fragile, obese, elderly, and socially disadvantaged, and children in general are less affected. All children are at risk, but those with comorbidities and neonates are more susceptible. The multisystem inflammatory syndrome is a severe version which can present in any child with a recent COVID-19 infection. The face of the pandemic has been changing in the last few months, with recent increasing cases, virus mutations, and onset of vaccination. This article provides COVID-19 management for children and adolescents and implications for nursing and advanced practice providers.