View clinical trials related to Opioids; Harmful Use.
Filter by:Chronic pain management is complex, with healthcare providers historically relying on prescribing opioid medications such as morphine. Although opioids may partially improve pain, there are risks associated with them as well, including pain worsening, side effects, addiction and overdose. It is now understood that the management of chronic pain is more effective when multiple healthcare team members work together and incorporate multiple strategies instead of focusing solely on medications. An example of an effective, non-drug strategy for pain is a service offered by clinical psychologists called "Acceptance and Commitment Therapy" - or ACT - which empowers individuals, to implement alternative ways of thinking about and reacting to pain and its effect on their lives. Canada has responded to the opioid overdose crisis with new guidelines that encourage physicians and those suffering from chronic pain to aim for lower opioid doses whenever possible, a process often referred to as "tapering." Unsurprisingly, tapering opioids is often difficult for patients to consider, primarily due to misconceptions that it will cause more harm than good. This project aims to address these misconceptions by developing and offering an all-day educational workshop for patients, co-presented by a healthcare team (clinical psychologists, pharmacists and physicians), to provide in-depth information on opioid related risks and misconceptions, as well as a large component focusing on ACT training. Investigators then want to see if these sessions change individual attitudes towards opioid tapering and if it improves willingness and ability to successfully reduce opioid doses to a safer level.
There was a study titled "A prospective evaluation of opioid utilization after upper extremity surgical procedures: Identifying consumption patterns and determining prescribing guidelines" by Dr. Matzon and team from Thomas Jefferson University that came up with a simple set of opioid guidelines post-surgically. These guidelines are helping to guide surgeon's prescribing patterns and ideally limit the number of prescribed pain medicines. We plan to identify typical narcotic analgesic usage post sports orthopaedic surgery. We hope to identify the number of narcotic pain pills to prescribe to patients undergoing orthopaedic sports surgery in the future.
The escalating opioid overdose epidemic is one of the most serious public health problems confronting the U.S. Death due to drug overdose is a significant and rising cause of mortality and morbidity in Philadelphia. While naloxone is increasingly accessible to combat opioid overdoses, new responses to delivering naloxone to overdose events are needed. The proposed pilot project, to be conducted in Philadelphia, will pursue three specific aims: 1) Identify barriers and facilitators of acceptance and use of a smartphone-based naloxone intervention; 2) Pilot test the implementation of the intervention among 55 non-medical opioid users and 55 community members; 3) Synthesize knowledge acquired in Aims 1 and 2 to be used in a subsequent R01 study to conduct a large-scale, multi-site implementation trial.