#88. Pharmacovigilance to Evaluate Efficacy and Net Clinical Benefit in Pediatric Pain Medicine

Nov 16, 2021

Pediatric pain management is fraught with reasons that make it feel like we are operating blindfolded. Many treatments are used without clear indications or evidence specifically in this population.  What if you had a way to study what you do in pediatric pain management, while you do it, would you embrace it?

 

In this episode, Dr. Drake Ross, a specialty pediatrician at Starship Children’s Health in Auckland, New Zealand with training in pediatric pain and palliative care, shares with us the features, goals and outcomes of their Rapid pharmacovigilance program, a multi institutional collaborative clinical research endeavor. This program provides real-time evaluation of net clinical benefit of what we do in our day to  day clinical practice, while  we do it!

 

Takeaways In This Episode

 

• What got Dr. Drake’s to transition from general pediatrics into palliative care and pediatric pain medicine
• How he get interested in pharmacovigilance and how he initiated that for pediatric pain medicine as the RAPID multi-institutional, international endeavor
• What Rapid is?
• Findings of their research thus far and what's on the horizon
• How you can participate in this research endeavor while carrying out your daily clinical work and the benefits it offers as collaborators
• How they determine their protocol numbers and demographics
• What Dr. Drake hopes for Rapid to achieve 
• Unique benefits of this collaborative research compared with other databases  based research (Hint: the ability of foresight and hindsight simultaneously!)
• The biggest takeaways and his message to  the audience

 

Links

 

Ross Drake, MB ChB, FRACP, FAChPM, FFPMANZCA

Rapid Program

Get involved with Rapid program

Alternate Contact

Attend the International Symposium on Pediatric Pain 2022

Clinicians’ Pain Evaluation Toolkit

Proactive Pain Solutions

 

About the Guest: 

 

Ross Drake, MB ChB, FRACP, FAChPM, FFPMANZCA

 

Dr.  Drake is a Pediatrician who specializes in Pain Medicine and Palliative Care for children having gained fellowships in Paediatrics, Palliative Medicine and Pain Medicine after he completed specialist training at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London and The Children’s Hospital at Westmead in Sydney. 

Ross is Clinical Lead of the Paediatric Palliative Care and Complex Pain Services at Starship Children’s Hospital; both being the only specialist services of their type in New Zealand. Amongst his clinical duties he strives to improve the recognition and support of children/tamariki & young adults/rangitahi and their families/whānau requiring palliative care and the management of chronic pain. He remains very involved in developing a national approach to both disciplines and works to improve resourcing to enable equitable access and service delivery for all New Zealand children in need.

Dr Drake also regularly presents and teaches on various topics in children’s pain medicine and palliative care. More recently, he has been involved with establishing an international pharmacovigilance research collaborative (The RAPID Program) looking at the effectiveness and adverse effects of medications and other interventions commonly used in palliative care and pain management.