The Authors’ Own Words: The risks of opioid treatment: perspectives of primary care practitioners and patients from safety-net clinics

The Authors’ Own Words: We ask authors to describe their impressions regarding the implications of their accepted work, how their findings will change practice, and what is noteworthy about the work.

The risks of opioid treatment: perspectives of primary care practitioners and patients from safety-net clinics

Emily E. Hurstak, MD, MPH; Margot Kushel, MD; Jamie Chang, PhD; Rachel Ceasar, PhD; Kara Zamora, MA; Christine Miaskowski, RN, PhD, FAAN; & Kelly Knight, PhD

Substance Abuse Vol. 38, Iss. 2, 2017

“In our qualitative study, found that both PCPs and patients emphasized medico-legal risks of opioids to the prescribing clinician. Patients minimized adverse health consequences of opioids. However, patients did report a risk of addiction, which they defined differently than clinicians. Patients perceived clinic policies aimed at reducing opioid misuse to be stigmatizing and applied unfairly. Our findings have implications for the informed consent process for chronic opioid therapy, the implementation of clinical opioid prescribing policies, and the use of overdose prevention strategies like naloxone.”