Raoul Daoust's study shows that opioid prescriptions in emergency departments appear to exceed patients' needs to treat their pain. This could open the door to potential misuse of the drugs.
Raoul Daoust is a full professor in the Faculty of Medicine at the Université de Montréal and a member of the QPRN. The results of the study he has just published reveal that the quantity of opioids prescribed in emergency departments does not always reflect patients’ needs. According to the results, two-thirds of the drugs prescribed are not used and therefore represent a potential for misuse. Dr Emily Mcdonald, Associate Professor of Internal Medicine at McGill University, Director of the Canadian Network on Appropriate Medication Use and Deprescribing and a member of the QPRN, is encouraging the introduction of practice guidelines to inform clinicians about the quantity of medication and duration of treatment recommended for different clinical situations. In the meantime, the authors of the article suggest that prescriptions should be given to patients in two stages. The second part of the treatment, if necessary, would then be available to the patient if the pain persisted. However, this solution does not seem ideal to QPRN patient partner Laurent Dupuis, who believes that mobility problems in some patients could make a second trip challenging.
