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Free Pain Management Workshops at WMH
(Honesdale, April 17, 2017)… Six free workshops in managing pain without opiates will be offered during evenings in May at Wayne Memorial Hospital. The workshops, titled “Positive Healing,” are open to everyone in the community and follow similar workshops offered to medical professionals in 2015 and 2016. Topics include the role of occupational and physical therapy, the benefits of sleep, the “energy” of herbs, pharmacological alternatives to opioids, cold laser therapy and meditation.
“Our area, and the entire state of Pennsylvania, is in the grip of an opioid epidemic, much of it stemming from the abuse of medicines prescribed for pain,” said Donna Decker, RN, manager WMH Community Health and series organizer. “These workshops are designed to give people tools to control their pain and take ownership of their own pain management.”
Statistics show that in 2015, more than 3,500 people in Pennsylvania died from drug overdoses—more than the number of people who died in car crashes. What’s more, drug abuse and particularly heroin use (a cheaper alternative to prescription opiates) have been steadily rising in rural areas of the state. Studies also point out that thousands of young adults who die from prescription drug overdoses are abusing drugs not prescribed for them but for someone else.
Decker noted that both Wayne Memorial Hospital and its physician arm, the independent Wayne Memorial Community Health Centers, have changed their pain prescribing policies to be pro-active in addressing prescription drug abuse.
All the workshops will run from 6pm – 7pm in the hospital’s David Katz Conference Center on the second floor. They will take place May 8th, 10th, 11th, 15th, 17th and 24th. For a full schedule of the topics and presenters, click here Positive Healing – FINAL SCHEDULE or call WMH Community Health at (570) 253-8990. Registration is not required.
Photo: Donna Decker, RN, series organizer behind free pain management workshops at Wayne Memorial Hospital poses with three of the 13 presenters: Patrick Klein, RPh; Barbara Griggs-Pratt, MA, RDN, LDN; and Frank Piotrowski, RPh.
