The University of Tennessee Health Science Center’s College of Nursing is offering its 2nd-Annual Opioid Conference May 2-3.
The free conference will provide continuing education credits for physicians, nurses and pharmacists. Registration is available at cenow.uthsc.edu.
The conference, to be held at the Shelby Farms FedEx Events Center, will feature as its keynote speaker Stephen Loyd, MD, an internal medicine and addiction medicine physician who is chief medical officer for Cedar Recovery in Middle Tennessee. Dr. Loyd is the vice president of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners. He has been in recovery from opioid and benzodiazepine addiction since 2004.
Speakers will cover topics such as Faith-Based Initiatives in our State and Community, Supporting Mothers with Addiction, Supporting Families Affected by Opioid and other Substance Misuse, and Introduction of Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome and the Eat/Sleep/Console Intervention. There will also be panel discussions.
Opioid conference speakers include E. Kyle Cook, a neonatal nurse practitioner from East Tennessee Children’s Hospital, and two members of the UTHSC College of Nursing faculty: Professor Kate Fouquier, CNM, PhD, FACNM, DNP Nurse-Midwifery Concentration coordinator; and Professor Bobby Bellflower, DNSc, NNP-BC, FAANP, DNP Program director.
Conference speakers also include Amy Weirich, Shelby County District Attorney General; Monty Burks, CPRS, PhD, director of Faith-Based Initiatives with the Tennessee Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services; and Judge Duane Slone, chair of the Appalachian-Midwest Regional Judicial Opioid Initiative, the Substance Misuse & Addiction Resources for Tennessee “SMART” Justice Network, and the Tennessee Judicial Conference Problem Solving Court Committee.
There is also an optional telehealth pre-conference from 9:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. May 2. Telehealth played a major role in meeting mental health needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the pre-conference will cover telehealth terms, best practices in telehealth, and how the pandemic impacted telehealth. The speaker will be Joe Schaffner, MPA, assistant director of outreach for the South Central Telehealth Resource Center. A panel discussion on telehealth will be led by Jennnifer Tourville, DNP, CPNP, UT System director of substance misuse outreach and initiatives.
The conference is hosted by the Advanced Nursing Education Workforce for Healthy Delta Moms and Babies program of the UTHSC College of Nursing, which is funded through a grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration.