ICN SPECIALIST AFFILIATE

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Peggy Compton

PhD, RN, FAAN

Dr. Compton is a Professor and the van Ameringen Endowed Chair in the Department of Family and Community Health at the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing.  She is a Fellow of the American Academy of Nursing and a member of the International Association in the Study of Pain, and the College on Problems of Drug Dependence. Her area of clinical expertise is the intersection of opioids, addiction and pain, and her novel data have contributed to a growing body of literature on the phenomenon of opioid-induced hyperalgesia, as well as informed guidelines for the management of pain in persons with opioid addiction or on maintenance opioid therapy. Complementing Dr. Compton’s expertise in the pain responses of opioid addicts is her clinical work establishing methods to identify substance use disorders and addiction in patients with chronic pain on ongoing opioid analgesic therapy. She has published extensively in the scientific literature on substance use disorder in chronic pain patients on opioid therapy, and the pain responses of persons with opioid use disorder with and without chronic pain. Having worked in several public treatment settings, she is expert in the use of methadone, buprenorphine and naltrexone in the treatment of opioid use disorder. She has served on FDA, SAMHSA and NIH expert panels on prescription opioid abuse, and contributed to position statements from the American Pain Society, College on Problems of Drug Dependence, and the American Society of Pain Management Nurses on pain management for patients with addictive disease.  She is principal investigator on an NIH study evaluating the effects of opioid taper on post-operative pain outcomes in patients undergoing joint replacement surgery, and recently completed another NIH study evaluating the effects of opioid taper on pain responses in patients with chronic pain. Dr. Compton is the 2020 recipient of the Betty Ford Award from the Association for Multidisciplinary Education and Research in Substance use and Addiction, and was recently inducted into the Nurse Researcher Hall of Fame by Sigma Theta Tau International in recognition for the impact of her work.