McGill Pain Rounds - Beth Darnall, PhD "Deleterious effects of a one-size-fits all approach to pain management and opioid reduction"

Beth Darnall, PhD is Associate Professor at Stanford University School of Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology, Perioperative, and Pain Medicine.

Dr. Darnall is principal investigator for large NIH and PCORI-funded multi-site clinical trials that broadly investigate behavioral medicine and self-management strategies for acute and chronic pain, and voluntary patient-centered prescription opioid reduction. Her work focuses on improving access to low-cost pain care by developing scalable solutions. Her efficient single-session behavioral pain medicine class, “Empowered Relief” is available in healthcare systems throughout the U.S., and in Australia, U.K., Denmark and Canada.

Dr. Darnall has authored/co-authored 5 books for patients and clinicians. She creates and investigates digital interventions and virtual reality treatments for perioperative and chronic pain. She serves as the chief science advisor for appliedVR.

In 2018 she briefed the U.S. Congress on the opioid and pain crises, and in 2019 provided invited testimony to the FDA on iatrogenic harms from forced opioid tapering. Her work has been featured in Scientific American, NPR Radio, BBC Radio, JAMA Internal Medicine and Nature. In 2018 she spoke on the psychology of pain relief at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.