{"id":6391,"date":"2021-07-28T16:13:18","date_gmt":"2021-07-28T20:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/?p=6391"},"modified":"2026-07-16T15:03:39","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T19:03:39","slug":"opioid-doctor-shopping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/2021\/07\/28\/opioid-doctor-shopping\/","title":{"rendered":"Opioid Doctor Shopping"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">goal<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Doctor shopping can be defined as the behaviour of visiting different prescribers and\/or pharmacies to obtain large amounts of opioids and suggests opioid use problems. This study aimed at assessing the prevalence of opioid doctor shopping among patients with chronic non-cancer pain (ie, pain lasting \u22653 months) attending multidisciplinary pain clinics in Quebec, Canada. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">methodology<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"> A total of 2191 patients, from the Quebec Pain Registry, with chronic non-cancer pain with at least one opioid dispensation within the 12 months following the index date were included. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-columns is-layout-flex wp-container-core-columns-is-layout-8f761849 wp-block-columns-is-layout-flex\">\n<div class=\"wp-block-column is-layout-flow wp-block-column-is-layout-flow\">\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Main findings<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Among the included patients, 15 (0.7%) presented at least one episode of doctor shopping. Among these doctor-shoppers, 9 (60.0%) exhibited only 1 episode.<br>Opioid doctor shopping was practiced by less than 1% of patients with chronic non-cancer pain attending multidisciplinary pain clinics suggesting a low risk of non-medical use.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">take home message<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Opioids remain useful medications that should be prescribed for patients with chronic  noncancer pain, without current or past substance use disorder and without other active psychiatric disorders, who have persistent problematic pain despite optimized nonopioid therapy, as suggested by the Guidelines. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<div style=\"height:20px\" aria-hidden=\"true\" class=\"wp-block-spacer\"><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC8232848\/pdf\/jpr-14-1855.pdf\" rel=\"noopener\">Access to the full article<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>goal Doctor shopping can be defined as the behaviour of visiting different prescribers and\/or pharmacies&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":6395,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[69],"tags":[38],"class_list":["post-6391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popularized-publications","tag-articles-en"],"acf":[],"views":252,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6391"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22761,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6391\/revisions\/22761"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qprn.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}