Pain Management for Nurses

Health Providers licensed in Oregon are now required to earn a total of 7.0 Continuing Education (CE) contact hours for license renewal. The OHSU School of Nursing Pain Management course is intended to help RNs and LPNS meet 6.0 of the 7.0 Pain Management required CE credits.

Print the brochure (.pdf)

Background:
OHSU School of Nursing and the OHSU Hospital Patient Care Division have partnered to create an Internet-based Pain Management CE course that meets the Board of Nursing requirements for license renewal for RNs and LPNs. The course is offered continuously and can be completed when it is convenient to you, the registrant! And, you can now register online!

The law requires that health providers take seven (7) hours of continuing education in pain management. For more information about the CE licensure requirements, go to:
http://www.osbn.state.or.us/OSBN/pdfs/painCEinfo.pdf
http://www.osbn.state.or.us/OSBN/pdfs/publications/sentinel8-04.pdf

How to Meet the 7.0 CE Contact Hour Requirement
One of the seven hours must be taken from the Oregon Pain Management Commission in an online format. Click here for the link to the Oregon Pain Commission module:
http://www.oregon.gov/DHS/pain/training.shtml

The remaining six (6) hours can be taken in an online format offered by Oregon Health & Science University. The Oregon State Board of Nursing has developed pain management curriculum guidelines, and our course has been developed in conjunction with those OSBN guidelines. The OSBN identified core content, and we offer the core content in five (5) modules. The core modules can be taken as a core offering or as individual modules. The final hour of CE credit can be taken in the nurse’s area of expertise. Therefore, we are offering 12 specialty modules from which registrants can select, depending on their area(s) of practice.

Note: Each module in the pain management course is worth 1.0 continuing education contact hour. The core course is comprised of 5 modules and, if taken as a unit, equals 5.0 CE contact hours when completed. Registrants will need to sign up for a total of 6 modules to meet the entire CE requirement.

Modules Available in OHSU Course:
Core Courses
The core modules have been developed, and are presented, by pain experts from OHSU and from other agencies. You can take all five core modules as a unit, or as separate modules. The topics and instructors in the core course are:

1. Ethical and Cultural Issues in Pain Management
Barbara Glidewell, MBS, CEC, Associate Director, Center for Ethics in Healthcare, OHSU

2. Our Current Understanding of Pain
Helen Turner, MSN, RN, CNS, APRN, BC, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Pediatric Pain Management, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, OHSU

3. Pain Management at the End of Life
Mary Denise Smith, RN, MS, CNS, ACHPN, Palliative Care Clinical Nurse Specialist, OHSU

4. Applying JCAHO Standards to Nursing Assessment/Practice
Stew Levy, RN, Comprehensive Pain Center, OHSU

5. Pharmacologic Management of Pain
Alicia Keene, MN, APRN, BC, Pain & Supportive Services, Kalispell, MT

Special Populations
The Oregon State Board of Nursing has provided for nurses to take pain management courses in specialty populations with course content applicable to a nurses’ practice. OHSU is offering 12 special populations modules:

6.1. Neonatal & Pediatric Pain Management: The Who, What, When, Where & Why Kids are Different
Helen Turner, MSN, RN, CNS, APRN, BC, Clinical Nurse Specialist, Pediatric Pain Management, Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, OHSU

6.2. Pain in Older Adults
Kristen Swafford, RN, MSN, Doctoral student with a focus on geriatric pain management, OHSU School of Nursing

6.3. Stroke Pain
Jeff Wagner, MD, Resident Physician, OHSU

6.4. Post-Operative Acute Pain Management
Ruth McGillion, RN, BSN, ONC, Nursing Practice & Education Coordinator 13A/9C (ortho/trauma and neuro/ENT), OHSU

6.5. Understanding Chronic Pain
Myrdalis Diaz-Ramirez, MD, Assistant Professor, OHSU School of Medicine

6.6. Cancer Pain Management: Assessment, Interventions and Barriers
Lori J. Ellingson, MSN, CNS, RN, AOCN, Division Director, Surgical & Oncological Nursing Division, OHSU

6.7. Pain in Critical Care
Katherine Kioshi, BA, MN, RN, CNS, Critical Care Nurse, Veterans Administration Medical Center, Portland, OR

6.8. Nonpharmacologic Treatment Options for Pain: Complementary and Alternative Medicine Approaches (CAM)
Angela Kendrick, MD, Associate Professor, Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, OHSU School of Medicine

6.9. Nonpharmacologic Pain Management for Children and Families
Vivian Gedaly-Duff, RN, DNSc, Associate Professor, OHSU School of Nursing; and Kim McKearnan, PhD, ORT/L, Assistant Professor, Pediatrics, OHSU School of Medicine and Director, Occupational Therapy Department, Child Development and Research Center, OHSU

6.10. Prescription Opiate Use, Prescription Opiate Abuse
Joshua Boverman, MD, Assistant Professor, Psychiatric and Family Medicine, School of Medicine, OHSU

6.11 Psychiatric Complexities in Pain Management
Laurence Colman, MD, MPH, Physician and Fellow, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, OHSU

6.12. Pain in Childbearing Women
Nancy Lowe, CNM, PhD, FACNM, FAAN, Elnora Thomson Distinguished Professor of Nursing, OHSU School of Nursing

CE Accreditation
This Independent Study Activity is approved by the Washington State Nurses Association, an accredited approver by the American Nurses Credentialing Centers’ Commission on Accreditation.

A certificate of completion will be sent electronically when the registrant has completed the course. Registrants must notify the CE office when they have completed all the modules. Instructions are included in your registration email (See section on “Register Now” below).

Enrollment and Completion Procedures.

CE staff now processes enrollmentson Thursdays of every week. Depending on the date you register for the course, it can take from 1-7 days to be enrolled in the course. Once enrolled, each individual will receive an email from the OHSU Sakai Helpdesk which includes information about how to access the course. These emails are sent on the Thursday or Friday of each week.  

The Sakai courseware automatically sends a temporary certificate of completion when an enrollee completes a module. The Sakai Helpdesk sends a completion report to the CE office on each Thursday. CE staff will issue the permanent certificates of completion and send them via email to the respective enrollee.

Those individuals who enrolled in Pain Management prior to June 27, 2008 will need to notify the CE office at snconted@ohsu.edu when they have completed the course. A certificate of completion will then be sent via email.

Who Can Take this Course?

Any RN or LPN licensed by the State of Oregon is eligible to take the course regardless of place of employment, place of residence, and/or employment status. Any RN or LPN who is licensed, but who would like to take the course is welcome to do so.

Other health care providers are welcome to take the course, although OHSU School of Nursing Continuing Education office makes no guarantee that the credit will be recognized by other licensing agencies. Please check first with your licensing Board to ensure that it will accept credit from this course as evidence that you have met the State of Oregon CE requirement.

Register Now
You can register online for one or more of the modules listed above. You are NOT automatically confirmed in the class when you complete and submit this online registration form. The online registration program will send you an electronic confirmation when you complete the registration form. Subsequently, CE staff will enroll you in the courses and will send you an email, including your username, password and instructions for receiving your CE certificate. Processing of registrations ordinarily takes between 2-6 days.

Registration Fees: Due to increased service charges, the registration fees will increase on September 1, 2008. The fee for each module will be $24. 

Questions:
Please call Donna Jensen at 503-494-2900 on Tuesdays and Thursdays, or send an email to snconted@ohsu.edu.

Click here for the OHSU Online Registration Form

For More Information
For commonly asked questions about the CE requirement and the Oregon State Board of Nursing policies, please go to:
http://www.osbn.state.or.us/OSBN/painCE_FAQs.shtml
http://www.osbn.state.or.us/OSBN/pdfs/policies/pain_management.pdf

Last updated August 26, 2008 by OHSU School of Nursing Web Managers.
Please send comments, questions, and reports of problems to sonnews@ohsu.edu.