Competent Pain Management for Older Patients With Cancer
Mini-Institute 6 (time: 2 hours, 53 minutes)

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Coordinator and Presenter:
Janice Reynolds, RN, BSN, OCN^®
Staff Nurse
Mid Coast Hospital
Brunswick, ME
Financial disclosure: nothing to disclose

Presenters:
Jeannine Brant, RN, MS, AOCN^®
Oncology Clinical Nurse Specialist
St. Vincent Healthcare
Billings, MT
Financial disclosure: Amgen Inc., AstraZeneca, Bristol-Myers Squibb Oncology, and Merck & Co., Inc. speakers bureaus

Denice Economou, RN, MN, AOCN^®
Manager, Pain and Symptom Management
Aptimum Oncology
Los Angeles, CA
Financial disclosure: nothing to disclose

Content Description
Older people continue to be an underserved population when it comes to pain management. In this population, pain can contribute to physiologic stress, decreased functionality, and loss of quality of life. Presenters will address the physiologic changes associated with aging, including comorbidities that cause pain and the compounding effects of cancer-related pain. Assessment of pain in this population is complicated by the fact that this is not a homogeneous group. Care of physiologically young older people must be managed differently than care offered to frail or cognitively impaired older adults. Older adults frequently are under-treated for pain. Presenters will discuss the challenges of pain management in this population because of physiologic changes and polypharmacy. Nonpharmacologic interventions also will be discussed. A case study of an older adult and his journey through pain management will be presented.

Pharmacology content: 30 minutes. Contact hours: 3.5.

Program Objectives
After completing this activity, the participant will be able to:

1. Identify the physiologic changes associated with aging and myths about and barriers to pain management in this population.
2. Describe causes of cancer-related pain and comorbidities that contribute to pain in older patients with cancer.
3. Describe assessment of pain in older patients and identify the difficulties of pain assessment in this population.
4. Identify the different components that are needed to assess and evaluate pain management in older adults.
5. Identify methods of pharmacologic pain management and adaptations needed for safe pharmacology in older adults.
6. Identify nonpharmacologic methods of pain management that complement the pharmacologic methods.

CE Evaluation
After viewing the entire session, download and complete the CE evaluation and commitment to change statement. The evaluation is available for download as a Microsoft Word form or PDF. The Word form contains editable fields that can be completed electronically. Simply type your responses, save the completed version, print the form, and mail it to ONS.

Word doc
PDF

Download Slides
PDF versions of the session slides are available for you to download.

Slide note pages (Reynolds)
Slide note pages (Brant)
Slide note pages (Economou)

Supported by Endo Pharmaceuticals
Sponsored by the Pain Management Special Interest Group