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Cannabis and harm reduction: A nursing perspective
Joint Event on World Summit on Healthcare & Hospital Management & International Conference & Exhibition onBiologics and Biosimilars
March 26-27, 2018 | Orlando, USA
Mary Lynn Mathre
Patients Out of Time, USA
Scientific Tracks Abstracts : Asian J Biomed Pharmaceut Sci
Abstract:
Harm reduction is a public health model that serves to accept people as they are and provide education and services or treatments that can reduce negative health effects related to their behaviors, especially for those with drug abuse problems. The concept of harm reduction can be broadened to include interventions that help a person reduce negative health effects from a wide range of treatments and/or behaviors. Cannabis is a healing herb that can be an effective harm reduction agent in health care practices. While the U.S. may be lacking in doubleblind, placebo-controlled clinical trials on the medical use of Cannabis; the long history of its use, the remarkably wide margin of safety, and the discovery of the endocannabinoid system (ECS) provide clear evidence to support the innumerable anecdotal reports of Cannabis as a safe and effective medicine for a wide variety of indications. This presentation will provide a broad overview of the ECS and its role in health maintenance and healing and explain how Cannabis can supplement the ECS. Nurses play a key role in the overall management of patient care, including the administration of medications and treatments and monitoring the subsequent effects of those interventions as well as educating patients on health promotion and health maintenance behaviors. The federal prohibition of Cannabis is baseless and the source of most, if not all, harms related to the use of Cannabis. In states where medical Cannabis has been available to patients there have been a decrease in healthcare costs, a decrease in opioid overdoses, and a decrease in crime and domestic violence. This presentation will present a paradigm shift in recognizing the potential value of Cannabis as a therapeutic harm reduction agent rather than its exaggerated harms as a drug of abuse.
Biography:
Mary Lynn Mathre is the President and Co-founder of Patients Out of Time, a national non-profit organization dedicated to educating health care professionals and the public about the therapeutic use of Cannabis. She is Editor of “Cannabis in Medical Practice: A Legal, Historical Pharmacological Overview of the Therapeutic Use of Cannabis” (1997) and Co-editor of “Women and Cannabis: Medicine, Science and Sociology” (2002). She received her BSN from the College of St. Teresa in Winona, MN in 1975 and began her Nursing career in the US Navy Nurse Corps until 1979. Her specialty was Medical Surgical Nursing. She began teaching at the University of Virginia School of Nursing, but changed her focus to Addictions Nursing in 1987 and returned to clinical practice first on the Addictions Treatment Unit at UVA, then as the Addictions Consult Nurse for the UVA Health System and from 2004-2007 she was Executive Director of an opioid treatment program in Charlottesville. Currently, she is an Independent Addictions Consultant. She has authored Cannabis resolutions for several organizations including the Virginia Nurses Association, the National Nurses Society on Addictions (now the International Nurses Society on Addictions), and the American Public Health Association; written numerous articles and chapters on medicinal Cannabis; and served as an expert witness. She is a Founding Member and President of the newly created American Cannabis Nurses Association.
Email: mlmathre@hughes.net
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