A VA pharmacy program manager replaced opiates with acupuncture as alternative therapy to provide pain management treatments to Veterans without drugs.<\/p>\n
For more than 75 years, VA has been at the forefront of innovations in health care\u2014and teaching those innovations\u2014to improve the quality of care for Veterans. From melding traditional learning with simulation lessons to virtual reality immersion experiences to non-pharmaceutical treatments for chronic pain, VA innovations create safer, more effective care for Veterans and training for the next generation of highly skilled health professionals.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Health care innovations are not always new treatments or new technologies. Instead, they may involve unexpected providers utilizing long-standing methods to meet their patients\u2019 needs. While acupuncture is thousands of years old, it was incorporated by medics and corpsmen during the Vietnam War to help wounded service members manage pain. <\/p>\n
Courtney Jason Givens, mental health and pain clinical pharmacy program manager at the North Texas VA<\/a> in Dallas, recognized the need for non-pharmaceutical pain management options while working in a VA mental health clinic. That\u2019s when she became interested in alternative therapies and VA\u2019s whole health approach to managing chronic pain. She went on to become certified in battlefield acupuncture and now works daily with the pain management team providing both pharmacological management and acupuncture.<\/p>\n \u201cFor many of those Veterans, opiates were not an option because they had co-occurring substance use disorder. It was too risky to use an opiate. I wanted to find a way I could contribute something else to their treatment plan to get them to their goals,\u201d she shared.<\/p>\n Battlefield acupuncture\u2014also known as auricular acupuncture\u2014is a non-invasive procedure that uses small gold needles strategically placed on five points of each ear to relieve pain throughout the body. This application of acupuncture was first discovered in 2001 by Dr. Richard Niemtzow (USAF retired). He determined that by applying acupuncture techniques to specific points on the ear, pain could rapidly be relieved for soldiers on the battlefield. This treatment option was quickly adopted by the military and later VA as a highly effective way to relieve pain both on and off the battlefield.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Pharmacy students and residents can learn and become licensed in battlefield acupuncture as an alternative to medications in pain management.<\/p>\n Givens has incorporated battlefield acupuncture into the pain treatment plans of many of her patients with much success. \u201cWhen we were able to utilize battlefield acupuncture for them, everything changed in terms of their pain. I was happy to incorporate this into my practice.\u201d<\/p>\n VA\u2019s relentless work in health care research and training continues to innovate care for Veterans and the nation. VA conducts its training programs for more than 113,000 health professions trainees annually in affiliation with over 1,400 educational institutions across the country, including 99% of the nation\u2019s medical colleges.<\/p>\n These academic affiliations, some of which began more than 75 years ago, are coordinated by VA\u2019s Office of Academic Affiliations (OAA).<\/p>\n Find out more about VA\u2019s academic mission\u00a0by watching this video<\/a>\u00a0and visiting the\u00a0Office of Academic Affiliations website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A VA pharmacy program manager replaced opiates with acupuncture as alternative therapy to provide pain management treatments to Veterans without drugs. For more than 75 years, VA has been at the forefront of innovations in health care\u2014and teaching those innovations\u2014to improve the quality of care for Veterans. From melding traditional learning with simulation lessons to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[694,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acupuncture","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29067,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29064\/revisions\/29067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u201cEverything changed in terms of their pain.\u201d<\/h2>\n
![<\/a>VA pharmacists use battlefield acupuncture as an effective non-pharmaceutical method for pain management<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\nCourtney Jason Givens, mental health and pain clinical pharmacy program manager at the North Texas VA<\/a> in Dallas, recognized the need for non-pharmaceutical pain management options while working in a VA mental health clinic. That\u2019s when she became interested in alternative therapies and VA\u2019s whole health approach to managing chronic pain. She went on to become certified in battlefield acupuncture and now works daily with the pain management team providing both pharmacological management and acupuncture.<\/p>\n\u201cFor many of those Veterans, opiates were not an option because they had co-occurring substance use disorder. It was too risky to use an opiate. I wanted to find a way I could contribute something else to their treatment plan to get them to their goals,\u201d she shared.<\/p>\nBattlefield acupuncture\u2014also known as auricular acupuncture\u2014is a non-invasive procedure that uses small gold needles strategically placed on five points of each ear to relieve pain throughout the body. This application of acupuncture was first discovered in 2001 by Dr. Richard Niemtzow (USAF retired). He determined that by applying acupuncture techniques to specific points on the ear, pain could rapidly be relieved for soldiers on the battlefield. This treatment option was quickly adopted by the military and later VA as a highly effective way to relieve pain both on and off the battlefield.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nPharmacy students and residents can learn and become licensed in battlefield acupuncture as an alternative to medications in pain management.<\/p>\n\u201cEverything changed in terms of their pain.\u201d<\/h2>\nGivens has incorporated battlefield acupuncture into the pain treatment plans of many of her patients with much success. \u201cWhen we were able to utilize battlefield acupuncture for them, everything changed in terms of their pain. I was happy to incorporate this into my practice.\u201d<\/p>\nVA\u2019s relentless work in health care research and training continues to innovate care for Veterans and the nation. VA conducts its training programs for more than 113,000 health professions trainees annually in affiliation with over 1,400 educational institutions across the country, including 99% of the nation\u2019s medical colleges.<\/p>\nThese academic affiliations, some of which began more than 75 years ago, are coordinated by VA\u2019s Office of Academic Affiliations (OAA).<\/p>\nFind out more about VA\u2019s academic mission\u00a0by watching this video<\/a>\u00a0and visiting the\u00a0Office of Academic Affiliations website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A VA pharmacy program manager replaced opiates with acupuncture as alternative therapy to provide pain management treatments to Veterans without drugs. For more than 75 years, VA has been at the forefront of innovations in health care\u2014and teaching those innovations\u2014to improve the quality of care for Veterans. From melding traditional learning with simulation lessons to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":29066,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[694,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acupuncture","category-health"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29064","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29064"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29064\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29067,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29064\/revisions\/29067"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/29066"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/adn.monetizemail.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/news.va.gov\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2023\/09\/Ear_r1.jpg\"){kind=link}