Nonopioid Treatment Offers Safer, Effective Alternatives for Pain Management

The opioid crisis has cost the US billions of dollars and millions of lives. According to pharmacist and pain management advocate Duane Jones, BS Pharm, regional pharmacy supervisor and clinical program director at Harps Food Stores, the profession is still working through the aftermath while simultaneously charting a better path forward.

In part 1 of our discussion with Jones, he offers a frank and impassioned look at how the opioid epidemic reshaped the conversation around pain management and why the industry is now turning back to what the evidence has supported all along: first-line, nonopioid therapies.

Drawing on decades of pharmacy experience, personal clinical encounters, and work at a drug addiction facility, Jones makes the case that opioids were never the right answer for most pain. In our discussions with him, Jones offers that ketorolac and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) should have been leading the charge from the start.

He also references the groundbreaking work being done at Johns Hopkins, where a multidisciplinary team overhauled the hospital's post-operative pain protocol entirely, confirming that the majority of surgical procedures simply do not require opioids when evidence-based alternatives are properly applied.

For pharmacists, the conversation carries a clear professional call to action: Push back on opioids as a default, advocate for patient-centered pain management, and educate patients on what to realistically expect during recovery. Jones also touches on gabapentin, meloxicam, and acetaminophen as part of a broader nonopioid toolkit that pharmacists are uniquely positioned to champion.

This is a conversation that anyone in the pharmacy profession who cares about patient outcomes, especially in the persistently challenging area of pain management, should tune into.

READ MORE: Nonopioid Pain Management Resource Center