Tampa, Fla.-based Select Physicians Surgery Center's David Samuels, MD, founded Non-opioid Patient Engagement — also known as NOPE! — to provide education about the risks of opioid use, according to the American College of Healthcare Executives.
What you should know:
1. Dr. Samuels serves as Select Physicians Surgery Center's medical director of anesthesia.
2. Through NOPE!, he aims to educate the community, patients, physicians, certified registered nurse anesthetists and healthcare staff about adverse effects of opioids.
3. The organization focuses on teaching healthcare systems ways to safely store and destroy opioids, helping surgeons avoid over-prescribing and preventing excess opioids from ending up in patients' medicine cabinets.
4. Dr. Samuels said the term "opioid-free" makes people think pain will be left untreated. He prefers to use the term 'non-opioid.'
"I find the term 'non-opioid' has a dramatically different interpretation; we are using alternatives to treat without the dangerous adverse effects of the opioids," he said in a 2017 interview with The Society for Opioid Free Anesthesia.