Just wanted to point you to an article I came across on STAT, a great online resource covering health, medicine, politics and more.
The article explains why the chair of Virginia Commonwealth University’s School of Dentistry has become an evangelist for raising awareness among and changing the way opoids are prescribed by the dental profession. Dr. Omar Abubaker’s son died of an overdose three years ago and sent him on a mission to learn everything he could about substance-use disorders.
The article explains, “As he grew more knowledgeable, Abubaker not only scaled back the number of pills he prescribed to patients, but also reconfigured VCU’s curriculum to include a frank discussion of how addiction can be prevented, how to spot it, and how to direct patients to treatment. Now he’s fighting to get dental schools nationwide to incorporate similar lessons into their curricula in hopes that the next generation of dentists can do better than his own.”
Read his compelling story here and a similar perspective from Dr. Joel Funari, a Pennsylvania oral surgeon who is also in the forefront of changing the way health care providers prescribe opioids