Adopting graduate competencies in opioid prescribing for Massachusetts physician assistant programs: A statewide public health response

Opioid addiction has become a national epidemic. Morbidity and mortality from prescription and synthetic opioid use and abuse have increased at an alarming rate in recent years. Ensuring that physician assistant (PA) graduates have the knowledge to become safe prescribers of medications, including opiates, is a goal of PA training programs. Achieving that goal requires fostering PA student competence regarding current issues in pain control, drug use and misuse, polypharmacy, diversion, self-medication, and substance use disorder. We present a public health approach to addressing that need. Our approach involved developing consensus among the 9 PA programs in Massachusetts concerning the adoption and implementation of statewide, graduate core competencies for the prevention and management of prescription drug misuse. The process implemented in Massachusetts could be used as a model in other states and might be relevant to addressing other public health crises. We present the adopted competencies as well as individual PA programs' curricular approaches.