Congratulations to Jacques E. Chelly, MD, PhD, MBA, the principal investigator of a new award funded by the Shadyside Hospital Foundation for the study “Surgical Opioid Stewardship Program.” The project focuses on multidisciplinary approaches to perioperative pain and includes fellow University of Pittsburgh/UPMC investigators Shiv K. Goel, MD (Anesthesiology & Perioperative Medicine); Benjamin J. Davies, MD (Urology); Michael J. O'Malley, MD, FAAOS (Orthopaedic Surgery); Matthew P. Holtzman, MD (Surgery); and Carolyn De La Cruz, MD (Plastic Surgery).
The program will provide additional support in collaboration with UPMC Shadyside hospital to develop an opioid-free treatment pathway for surgical patients. The study will especially focus on building a platform to improve coordination between anesthesiologists, surgeons, pharmacists, and nurses to satisfy an increasing number of patients who wish to receive minimal or even no opioids during their stay at UPMC Shadyside. The award will allow the development of tools to identify patients, increase education, and provide multimodal approaches to anesthesia and perioperative pain management such as non-opioid pharmacology, regional anesthesia, and complementary and alternative techniques like mindful breathing, aromatherapy, hypnosis, and auriculotherapy.