Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Forward
Deprescribing/Tapering of Prescription Benzodiazepines
This course provides knowledge and skills to define, manage, and appropriately understand deprescribing and tapering of prescription benzodiazepines.
Target Audience
All Prescribers of Controlled Substances
MD/DO
Advanced Practice Clinicians
Registered Nurses
Dentists
Learning Objectives
- Utilize motivational interviewing informed approaches to discuss taper with patients.
- Outline benzodiazepine withdrawal symptoms.
- Describe advantages and disadvantages to different medical approaches to benzodiazepine deprescribing/tapering.
- Identify adjunctive medications utilized to address protracted withdrawal symptoms with understanding limited evidence base.
- Apply Benzodiazepine Action Work Group (BAWG) deprescribing/tapering guidance.
Jeffrey Gold, PharmD, BCPP is a psychiatric pharmacist and the psychiatric pharmacy residency director at the Veterans Affairs (VA) Rocky Mountain Regional Medical Center in Aurora, Colorado. After graduating from the Skaggs School of Pharmacy, he became the first pharmacist in the state of Colorado to have prescriptive authority in psychiatry. Dr. Gold has authored benzodiazepine taper guidelines, ran the benzodiazepine tapering clinic at the VA, as well as presented at several conferences about benzodiazepines, how to taper benzodiazepines, and how to manage complex situations involving benzodiazepines. He was the first non-physician to win the James Shore, MD, Teaching Award at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry. He was also featured in the Netflix documentary, “Take Your Pills: Xanax.”
Alexis Ritvo, MD, MPH, BA is a board-certified addiction psychiatrist and assistant professor of psychiatry at University of Colorado (CU) School of Medicine. She also serves as the Medical Director for the Alliance for Benzodiazepine Best Practices. She has been the program director for the CU addiction psychiatry fellowship since July 2020. She is co-chair of the Benzodiazepine Action Work Group with the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse, which she co-founded with Dr. Steven Wright, the former medical director for the Alliance. She has a passion for psychotherapy, teaching and improving health systems and policies.
Accreditation: This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Iowa Medical Society (IMS) through the joint providership of Compass Healthcare Collaborative and Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention. Compass Healthcare Collaborative is accredited by the IMS to provide continuing medical education for physicians.
Designation: Compass designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™ Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.
Commercial Support: This activity was developed without support from any ineligible company. *The ACCME defines ineligible companies as those whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. Note: The ACCME does not consider providers of clinical service directly to patients to be commercial interests unless the provider of clinical services is owned, or controlled by, and ACCME defined ineligible company.
Disclosure: Compass adheres to the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education. The content of this activity is not related to products or the business lines of an ACCME-defined ineligible company. None of the planners or moderators for this educational activity have relevant financial relationships to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing products used by or on patients.
Available Credit
- 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™