As a medical health professional, patients look to you as a key influence in their pain management. The strategies you equip your patients with, and the medication you prescribe, should always be clinically appropriate and tailored to their personal needs. There are a number of tools and resources you can access to help maximise patient benefits and minimise the potential harms associated with prescription opioids.

Know the Risk – Daily Oral Morphine Equivalent

Patients can be on a combination of prescription opioids or at doses which place them at risk. The Faculty of Pain Medicine’s opioid calculator is an essential clinical tool, designed to simplify the calculation of equianalgesic dose by expressing it as total oral Morphine Equivalent Daily Dose (oMEDD). It uses a “traffic light” dose warning system as a clear, simple way to indicate the risk of dose-related harm.

Download the free smartphone app, Opioid Calculator by ANZCA, today (17+).
Download for iOS
Download for Android 

HealthPathways SA is a free online portal that provides GPs and other health professionals with easy access to comprehensive, evidence-based assessment, management and local SA referral pathways for specific health conditions. HealthPathways SA is developed locally by South Australian GPs, specialists, nurses and other health professionals to improve patient access to the right care at the right time in the right place.

Pathways to support patient care include:

Prescribing In The Community

Most acute pain conditions presenting in general practice can be treated with non-opioid analgesia, with the RACGP specifically advising against prescription opioids for:¹

  • Uncomplicated back and neck pain
  • Uncomplicated musculoskeletal pain (i.e. shoulder pain)
  • Uncomplicated headache or migraine
  • Non-traumatic dental pain
  • Acute exacerbation of chronic non-cancer pain (CNCP)
  • Irritable bowel syndrome

 

If you do make the decision to prescribe opioids, this should be a conscious decision and made in partnership with the patient. Consideration should be made for the length of trial, discussion of potential side effects, additional supporting self-management strategies and review criteria. This is to reduce the risk of “drifting” into long-term opioid use, a common situation after an acute presentation or post-surgery.

Opioid therapy is not indicated in chronic non-cancer pain, with no evidence for improving chronic pain and functional outcomes in this cohort.² Population studies show that people maintained on long term opioid therapy for CNCP describe more troublesome pain and greater functional interference than people not on opioids.

To find out more on prescribing best practice, visit:


Assessing Dependence

The Routine Opioid Outcomes Monitoring (ROOM) Tool is a screening tool for prescription opioid dependence, developed specifically to use in primary care settings.³

Click here to download.

PBS-Subsidised Take Home Naloxone Pilot in South Australia

SA Health have commenced the local roll-out of PBS-Subsidised Take Home Naloxone Pilot to increase access to naloxone and reduce opioid related fatalities. Vouchers for no cost naloxone will be available through a range of settings including hospital and community pharmacies and primary care settings and will be provided alongside preventing and responding to the adverse effects of opioids brief advice.

Click here to find out more.

De-Prescribing Prescription Opioids

Prescription opioids should always be prescribed with a plan for reduction and cessation in place. Patient education is essential to successfully tapering opioids, with success more likely when the person is aware of the issues with long term use.

Tolerance to the analgesic effects of opioids develops in almost all people with long term use, with decreased benefits in long term prescription opioid use, defined as over eight weeks.²

It is recommended that patients with chronic non-cancer pain taking 100mg oral morphine equivalent or more should have their opioids decreased. Patients who are taking between 50-100mg oMEDD should be considered for opioid dose reduction or cessation².

NPS MedicineWise has developed an opioid tapering algorithm to help GPs step through the process of preparing a successful tapering plan with their patients who have chronic non-cancer pain. Click here to read their 5 steps to tapering opioids.

The Guide to Deprescribing: Opioids is an outline of recommended deprescribing where ongoing use is not appropriate.

The ANZCA Faculty of Pain Medicine (FPM) has developed recommendations about how to cease opioids after prescribing them to a patient. It sets out specific weaning strategies in the context of transition to self-management. Click here to view the FPM recommendations in entirety.

NCETA have a short resource developed to address several key issues related to pharmaceutical opioids. It is available here.

[1] Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (2017), Prescribing drugs of dependence in general practice – Part C1: Opioids.

[2] Primary Health Tasmania and Consultant Pharmacy Services (2019). ‘A guide to deprescribing: Opioids’. Available from https://www.primaryhealthtas.com.au/resources/deprescribing-resources/

[3] Nielsen S, Picco L, Middleton M, Kowalski M & Bruno R, Validation of the Routine Opioid Outcome Monitoring (ROOM) Screening tool in patients prescribed opioids for chronic pain. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) International Forum, San Antonia, Texas, USA. June 17, 2019 (Poster presentation)