UNC Anesthesiology is pleased to recognize Assistant Professor of Anesthesiology Irina Phillips, MD, for achieving American Board of Preventative Medicine (ABPM) board certification in Addiction Medicine in late 2025. Dr. Phillips dedicated her practice to Addiction Medicine entering her career as a Pain Medicine specialist (2015). Upon joining UNC Anesthesiology’s Pain Medicine division (2018), Dr. Phillips shaped her practice at UNC Hospitals around addiction medicine. In 2020, she joined the earliest group of attendings staffing UNC Psychiatry’s newly launched inpatient addiction medicine consult services. In 2024, she established a Pain Management Center half-day clinic to enable UNC Hospitals to concurrently offer in-patient and outpatient services to Addiction Medicine patients. 
Now “triple” board-certified in anesthesiology, pain medicine and addiction medicine, Dr. Phillips has recently focused on enriching UNC’s Pain Medicine services to better treat patients with co-morbid pain and opioid use disorder. Among her major areas of interest, she is exploring the complex intersection of pain and the significant clinical and therapeutic challenges linked to substance use disorders.
Dr. Phillips reflected: “My decision to pursue board certification reflects a deliberate commitment to deepening my expertise in this overlapping space to better serve patients with concurrent conditions. My particular interest is in the co-occurrence of pain and substance use disorder, which is a really complex and challenging clinical scenario. Despite the visibility of the opioid crisis and substance use disorders, there is still so much stigma around these topics and how these patients are often perceived and treated. I’m thankful to have the chance to provide compassionate, evidence-based care to this vulnerable group both inside and outside of UNC Anesthesiology.”