UMaine part of nationwide effort to safely prescribe opioids, WABI reports
WABI (Channel 5) reported on President Barack Obama’s recent announcement of efforts to stop the country’s prescription opioid and heroin epidemics. The University of Maine’s School of Nursing is one of almost 200 institutions that have signed on to require education for prescribing opioids, according to the report. The required education involves registered nurses in the graduate program, the report states. Nancy Fishwick, Director of the School of Nursing, said the school already has been teaching this information, but is glad to be a part of the initiative. “We live in a state where people do have bad back injuries, arthritis, headache syndrome, a lot of chronic pain syndromes, and so we want to attend to people’s pain, but to not set patients up for becoming addicted,” Fishwick said.