Nurse Practitioners’ Pivotal Role in Ending the Opioid Epidemic

A tremendous treatment gap exists for the care of persons with opioid use disorder. The vast majority of waivered practitioners, more than 90%, are in urban United States counties. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act of July 2016 enabled nurse practitioners to help fill that gap by prescribing buprenorphine for opioid use disorder. Free training is available for nurse practitioners who can play a key part in stemming the opioid epidemic in the US by obtaining a Drug Enforcement Administration waiver to prescribe buprenorphine, which is a mainstay treatment for opioid addiction. •Nurse practitioners (NPs) can prescribe buprenorphine for opioid use disorder in most US states.•NPs must take 24 hours of training to prescribe buprenorphine for medication-assisted treatment (MAT).•Buprenorphine is considered by many to be the gold standard for treating opioid use disorder.•MAT uses medication integrated with counseling to treat addiction.