Join us for a comprehensive day of learning on “Opioids in Clinical Practice,” taking place on Tuesday, 3rd June 2025, at the ICC in Newport, Wales.
Led by leading experts in pain medicine, psychiatry, and palliative care, this event will delve into the complexities of opioid use. From understanding how opioids work to tackling addiction and exploring adverse effects, you’ll gain insights into the latest research and clinical approaches. Engage in discussions on paediatric palliative care, approaches to weaning, and real-world case studies.
Whether you’re an experienced practitioner or early in your career, this session provides essential knowledge and practical strategies to optimize opioid management and patient outcomes.
Target Audience
This session targets healthcare professionals involved in pain management and opioid prescribing, including:
- Consultant physicians and pharmacists specializing in pain medicine and addiction.
- General practitioners and clinicians seeking guidance on opioid use in clinical practice.
- Palliative care specialists working with paediatric and adult patients.
- Early-career healthcare professionals interested in expanding their knowledge of opioids.
Aims and Objectives
The session aims to:
- Enhance understanding of the pharmacological mechanisms of opioids and their clinical implications.
- Discuss the latest evidence and guidelines on opioid use, focusing on addiction, long-term adverse effects, and genetic factors influencing efficacy and safety.
- Explore specialized applications such as opioids in paediatric palliative care.
- Present strategies for managing opioid dependency, including effective weaning approaches.
- Provide a platform for interactive learning through complex case discussions, fostering collaboration and practical problem-solving.
Workshop Programme
| 09:30 – 09:40 | Welcome | Felicia Cox with (am) Dr Jane Quinlan and (pm) Dr Paul Farquhar-Smith |
| 09:40 – 10:10 | How opioids work | Dr Emma Davies Principal Pharmacist South Wales |
| 10:10 – 10:30 | Opioids: pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomic considerations | Prof Roger Knaggs Professor in Pain Medicine & Pharmacy University of Nottingham President BPS |
| 10:30 – 11:00 | The evidence for opioids | Dr Cathy Stannard Consultant in complex pain and pain transformation program clinical lead NHS Gloucestershire CCG NICE Clinical Lead for Chronic Pain |
| 11:00 – 11:20 | Coffee break | |
| 11:20 – 12:00 | Long term opioid use after day case surgery in the UK | Dr Mark Rockett Consultant Anaesthetist Derriford Hospital, Plymouth
|
| 12:00 – 12:40 | Opioids Use Disorder | Prof Tim Hales Teaching & Research University of Dundee |
| 12:40 – 13:20 | Lunch | |
| 13:20 – 14:00 | Long term adverse effects of opioids | Dr Paul Farquhar-Smith Consultant in Pain Medicine Royal Marsden |
| 14:00 – 14:30 | Opioids in Paediatric Palliative Care | Dr Anna Karenia-Anderson Consultant Paediatric Palliative Care Physician Royal Marsden |
| 14:30 – 14:50 | Coffee break | |
| 14:50 – 15:30 | Approaches to weaning and optimisation | Dr Jane Quinlan Consultant in Pain Medicine Oxford University Hospitals Trust |
| 15:30 – 16:30 | Complex case discussions | All |
| 16:30 | Summary and close |
Workshop Speakers
Dr Emma Davies
Principal Pharmacist – pain, analgesic stewardship and harm reduction
Cwm Taf Morgannwg University Health Board
Emma Davies provides clinical support and advice to colleagues from a range of professions and a spectrum of specialties, especially for complex management including substance misuse in Primary and Secondary Care. In addition, Emma provides education and training to Primary Care practices and colleagues in Secondary Care. She also develops resources for Health Education and Improvement Wales, who co-ordinate national post-graduate training and education for all healthcare professionals in Wales.
Emma was lead author for All Wales guidelines on Analgesic Stewardship and Pharmacological Pain Management. She set up and co-ordinates a network for pharmacy professionals with an interest in Pain in Wales.
With degrees in pharmacology and pharmacy, Emma is interested not just in how drugs work but also when and where to use them and most importantly, how to do so safely.
Prof Roger Knaggs
Roger is a Professor of Pain management at the University of Nottingham where he completed his PhD on the physicochemical properties of opioids,
My major research interest relates to the appropriate use of analgesic medicines, and associated clinical outcomes and healthcare utilisation.
My main clinical and research interests relate to the appropriate use of analgesic medicines, and associated clinical outcomes and healthcare utilisation. One early study investigated the prescribing and clinical outcomes in primary care after opioid recommendation for chronic non-cancer pain from a pain clinic. This work won the UKCPA Napp Pain Award in 2005. Other topics have included the use of lidocaine 5% medicated plaster for peripheral neuropathic pain, the effectiveness of manual acupuncture and intramuscular stimulation for persistent pain, patient evaluation of nurse-led follow-up services for patients with chronic pain, and oral analgesic prescribing after major orthopaedic and gynaecological surgery.
There has been a marked increase in the use of strong opioids, such as oral morphine and oxycodone, and transdermal fentanyl and buprenorphine, for non-cancer indications over the last decade. I am beginning to study these changes and their geographical variation in more detail, together with understanding the impact of recent legislative changes following The Shipman Inquiry. There remain many unanswered questions regarding the long term effects of opioid therapy and in collaboration with clinical colleagues I am developing a research programme to address some of these issues.
Dr Anna-Karenia (AK) Anderson
Dr Anna-Karenia (AK) Anderson has worked as a consultant in Paediatric Palliative Medicine at the Royal Marsden Hospital and Shooting Star Children’s Hospice, where she is also the Medical Director.
Early on she established a specialist paediatric palliative care 24/7 out of hours service and later spearheaded the development of a specialist paediatric palliative care service for Surrey and Southwest London. She is research active, publishing in the areas of phase of illness, surprise question and Fentanyl with ongoing projects on symptom assessment tools. She is co-author of two Cochrane reviews on paediatric pain and contributor to the APPM formulary.
Dr Anderson created the national clinical guidelines group for Paediatric Palliative care, producing guidelines with the support of Cochrane Response on Seizures, Agitation, GI dystonia. A second series of guidelines are in development on pain and dystonia. As current chair of the APPM (Association for Paediatric Palliative Medicine), she has widened the organisations representation, championed the development of specialist interest groups including perinatal palliative care and supported the expansion of the education program. She has steadily increased the associations affiliations with other healthcare organisations.
She is also co-chair of the SPAN (Surrey and Southwest London) Paediatric Palliative Care network, and Children and Young People’s co-medical lead for Palliative and End of life care for Southeast England Region. Currently she is looking to support improvement in data reporting for services supporting children with life-limiting and life-threatening conditions.
AK is passionate about PPI representation supporting PPI representation within her clinical services, at region and in national projects.
Paul Farquhar-Smith
Paul Farquhar-Smith has been a Consultant in Pain, Anaesthetics and Intensive Care for over 11 years and he is a Fellow of the Faculty of Pain of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and a Fellow of the Faculty of Intensive Care Medicine.
Paul works in chronic cancer pain in liaison with palliative care, offering invasive analgesic techniques. A major interest is pain in cancer survivors such as chronic pain after surgery and chemotherapy-induced neuropathic pain.
He has written in reference textbooks and in the British Pain Society guidelines for cancer pain and has lectured nationally and internationally on the subject.
He is currently section editor of Current Opinion in Supportive and Palliative Care and is co-chair of the British Pain Society and the Association for Palliative Medicine joint working group in Pain in Cancer Patients.
Paul is currently investigating chemotherapy-induced neuropathy and looking at chronic pain after different types of reconstructive surgery for breast cancer.
Paul is a module editor with the ePAIN project.
Mark Rockett
Mark works as a consultant in anaesthesia and pain medicine at the University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust, where he leads the inpatient pain service. He attended Bristol University Medical School, qualifying MB ChB in 1993 with an intercalated BSc in Psychology. He is a fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists and of the Faculty of Pain Medicine and a member of the Royal College of Physicians. He trained in Pain Medicine in Edinburgh and Auckland, New Zealand, receiving the Barbara Walker Prize for Excellence in Pain Medicine at the FFPMANZCA examination. He has a PhD in Neuroscience from the University of Edinburgh. He has served on the Faculty of Pain Medicine board as an examiner and acute pain representative and received a faculty commendation. His research interests include the transition from acute to chronic pain and understanding the impact of perioperative analgesia on long term outcomes.
Dr Cathy Stannard
Cathy was a Consultant in Pain Medicine for 23 years and is now works for NHS Gloucestershire CCG. She writes and lectures widely on aspects of pain management, evidence, and opioid therapy in particular and the implications for public health. Cathy contributes to the work of PHE, MHRA, ACMD, NHS England/Improvement, the European Medicines Agency, and the Cochrane collaboration. She is a member of the IASP International Taskforce on Opioids and for the WHO Guideline on Cancer Pain Management. She is Clinical lead for the NICE Guideline on Chronic Pain and topic advisor for the NICE Guideline on Safe Prescribing and Withdrawal Management of Medicines Associated with Dependence. She provides in-reach pain services to five prisons in the South West of England and frequently contributes to conversations about pain, opioids and painkiller addiction in both written and broadcast media.
Prof. Tim Hales
Tim Hales graduated with a BSc (Hons) in Physiology from King’s College London in 1986 and a PhD from the University of Dundee in 1990. He completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Anesthesiology, University of California in Los Angeles and in 1997 was appointed Assistant Professor at the George Washington University (GWU) in Washington DC where he gained tenure in 2002. He became Professor in the Departments of Pharmacology and Anesthesiology & Critical Care Medicine and Director of Research in Anesthesiology at GWU (2006-2009).
Tim returned to Dundee in 2009 as Professor of Anaesthesia and non-clinical head of the Division of Neuroscience. He was elected Fellow of the Royal College of Anaesthetists in 2011 and was appointed Associate Dean in the School of Medicine in (2017-2023). His research group studies the mechanisms of action of anaesthetics and opioid analgesics, drugs that modulate neuronal communication through ion channel modulation. Tim’s goal is to improve anaesthesia and analgesia by educating future researchers and anaesthetists and identifying molecular targets responsible for the desirable and detrimental effects of anaesthetics and analgesics. His research has received support from the Wellcome Trust, Tenovus Scotland, the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health (USA), and the National Institute of Academic Anaesthesia (UK).
Tim established the UKRI/Versus Arthritis funded Consortium Against Pain Inequality (CAPE) in 2021. Part of the UK’s Advanced Pain Discovery Platform (APDP), CAPE is a group of researchers and their patient partners examining the impact of adverse childhood experiences on chronic pain and responses to treatment in later life. Tim is also a co-investigator on Alleviate – The APDP Pain Research Data Hub also based in Dundee.
Dr. Jane Quinlan
Jane Quinlan studied medicine and trained in anaesthesia in London before moving to Oxford. She is a consultant in anaesthesia and pain management at the Oxford University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, and is an honorary senior clinical lecturer at the University of Oxford. She is past secretary of the Acute Pain Special Interest Group (APSIG) for the International Association for the Study of Pain and past chair of APSIG of the British Pain Society.
Jane has an interest in prescribed opioid dependence and runs a clinic supporting pain patients to reduce long-term high-dose opioids. She also has an interest around the safe prescribing of opioids in postoperative pain to avoid the conversion to long-term use. She lectures nationally and internationally on opioid stewardship. She sits on the editorial board of the British Journal of Pain, and is on the organising committee of the National Acute Pain Symposium.
