Discussing Opioid Risks With Patients to Reduce Misuse and Abuse: Evidence From 2 Surveys

Joachim O. Hero; Caitlin McMurtry; John Benson; Robert Blendon

doi:10.1370/afm.1994

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Discussing Opioid Risk with Patients
Robert "Chuck" Rich

Published on: 23 November 2016

Published on: (23 November 2016)
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Discussing Opioid Risk with Patients
Robert "Chuck" Rich, Medical director
The authors are to be complimented in taking this step to assess the value of patient education regarding opioid misuse. In working with the recommendations from the CDC guideline, it is true that the majority of the recommendations were supported by little evidence based research, since that research doesn't exist. This article represents an attempt to evaluate the educational component of the CDC recommendations and fo...
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The authors are to be complimented in taking this step to assess the value of patient education regarding opioid misuse. In working with the recommendations from the CDC guideline, it is true that the majority of the recommendations were supported by little evidence based research, since that research doesn't exist. This article represents an attempt to evaluate the educational component of the CDC recommendations and for the behavior studied (saving medications for later ) this article suggests that such education does make a difference in patient behavior. This research will need to be validated by further research into patient education regarding opioids. That research should be expanded to evaluate the specific utility of the CDC recommendations focusing on education, namely recommendations 2 & 3 focusing on the discussion of treatment goals including a discussion of risk versus benefits and lesser so, recommendation 9 which recommends discussing information contained in a state's prescription drug monitoring program with the patient and recommendation 11 which addresses concomitant use of opioids and benzodiazepenes with education of the patient about the increased risk of overdose with their combined use. Research into the effectiveness of the educational component of these particular recommendations could help to reinforce to clinicians the importance of those recommendations in clinical practice.
Competing interests: None declared
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Competing Interests: None declared.