5) Change opioid-related medical practice. A potpourri of short- and long-term strategies could improve practice, he suggested. Patients should be told that sharing opioids is dangerous and illegal. Both patients and physicians need to learn that opioids are not the only response to pain. Emergency physicians should break their habit of automatically writing prescriptions for 30 days’ worth of a drug, and write for shorter time lengths when appropriate. Health care workers need to get better at recognizing addiction, and more attention should go toward ways of preventing “iatrogenic” addiction caused by the health care system itself.
Physicians need to lead the way in these efforts. “Who else?” he asked.
–Sherry Boschert (@sherryboschert on Twitter)