Improving Use of Opioid Safety in Primary Care

Abstract

With an increase in opioid prescription rates, opioid misuse, abuse and overdose deaths have increased in parallel. Primary care providers are responsible for the majority of the system’s pain management but may lack proper training. The purpose of this project was to implement an educational module designed to improve primary care providers’ knowledge about unnecessary opioid prescriptions, safe pain management and opioid related disorders. This project implemented an educational module to familiarize primary care providers with evidence based guidelines for prescribing opioids for chronic pain management. This project used a pretest-posttest design to evaluate if the educational module was effective in increasing provider knowledge. Provider knowledge was assessed using the KnowPain-12 tool and an eight-item survey based on the Center for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines for opioid prescribing. Six providers participated in the educational intervention and responded to the pre and post-survey. For the KnowPain-12 survey, three providers had a higher score following the intervention, one provider’s score stayed the same and two had lower scores. The KnowPain-12 survey score ranges from 0-60, average score of the pre-intervention survey was 39.33 and the average score of the post-intervention survey was 39.50. For the knowledge assessment of the CDC guidelines, one point was awarded to each correct response for a total of eight points possible. Overall scores were high, with an average score of 6.83 before the intervention and 7.5 after the intervention. Findings suggest that there may be an educational gap in chronic pain management for primary care providers. There needs to be further research to evaluate opioid prescribing practices in the primary care setting and to identify educational gaps. Educational interventions should be implemented to improve provider knowledge of chronic pain management.