None listed
Conditions
Brief summary
The misuse of opioids is a major public health issue, and one aspect of concern is the prescribing of opioids after surgery creating new users. Alfred Health's Analgesic Stewardship Committee identified clinician education as a key priority to improve opioid and analgesic prescribing across the organisation. This study will evaluate the impact of a one-off pharmacist-led face-to-face analgesic education session on rates of opioid prescribing at discharge from surgical units. Eight of sixteen surgical units will be randomised to receive the education intervention, with the other eight serving as a control group; all opioid-naive patients discharged from all surgical units in the three months before and three months after the intervention will be included for analysis. Discharge summaries and prescriptions will be reviewed to determine opioid prescribing at discharge. We hypothesise that the intervention will demonstrate a modest reduction in the prescribing of regular opioids to opioid-naive patients on discharge from surgical units.
Interventions
This is a non-drug trial. The intervention is a one-off pharmacist-led face-to-face education session presented to junior doctors (interns, residents) and clinical pharmacists working on surgical units. This will be a 30 minute 'lecture style' presentation delivered by the Analgesic Stewardship Pharmacist accompanied by Powerpoint slides. The education was developed by the Analgesic Stewardship Pharmacist in collaboration with the organisation's Acute Pain Service and Analgesic Stewardship Commi
This is a non-drug trial. The intervention is a one-off pharmacist-led face-to-face education session presented to junior doctors (interns, residents) and clinical pharmacists working on surgical units. This will be a 30 minute 'lecture style' presentation delivered by the Analgesic Stewardship Pharmacist accompanied by Powerpoint slides. The education was developed by the Analgesic Stewardship Pharmacist in collaboration with the organisation's Acute Pain Service and Analgesic Stewardship Committee. The education will be delivered by the Analgesic Stewardship Pharmacist and will take less than one hour. Half of the organisation's surgical units (8/16) have been randomly selected (using a random list generator) to receive the education. The education session includes information about pain management, analgesia and opioid harms, local and national point-prevalence data on opioid prescribing and mortality, and local and national guidelines for prescribing opioid medications and other analgesics. The session will be delivered within team meetings. No strategies will be used to monitor adherence.
Sponsors
Alfred Hospital
Study design
Allocation
Randomised controlled trial
Intervention model
Parallel
Primary purpose
Educational / counselling / training
Masking
Open (masking not used)
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
All
Age
18 Years to No maximum
Healthy volunteers
Yes
Inclusion criteria
Patients: Admitted to the Alfred Hospital under a surgical unit Opioid-naive (not prescribed/taking a regular opioid on admission to hospital) Discharged home (including residential, higher level care) Length of hospital stay of 24 hours or more Junior doctors/pharmacists Interns, residents or clinical pharmacists currently undertaking a rotation with one of the institution's 16 surgical units
Exclusion criteria
Patients Discharged to another acute facility or rehabilitation hospital Admitted or discharged on opioid replacement therapy Doctors/pharmacists None.
Outcome results
None listed