Health care policy. Advocating for Pain Assessment before Opioids Prescription.

Advocating for Pain Assessment before Opioids Prescription
Pibi Jean Bouda
University of Missouri in Saint Louis.
Abstract
The opioid crisis is a national epidemic in the United States of America. While opioids are medically prescribed to control pain, misuse of opioids has been prevalent. As a result, many Americans have died and others have been incarcerated due to crimes committed while using opioids. The existing policy has not been effective in addressing the opioid crisis. There is, therefore, a need to initiate a new policy that requires a pain assessment for every patient before an opioid prescription. This paper examines the benefits and limitations of the new policy against the existing policy in the State of Missouri. It also compares the proposed policy with an alternative policy of non-opioids prescriptions. Through this examination, the paper clearly demonstrates that the proposed policy is an effective approach to the opioid crisis.
Advocating for Pain Assessment before Opioids Prescription
Policy Statement
“The opioids crisis is a national problem in the United States. Many approaches are being put in place to reduce the severity of the problem. Initiating a policy that requires a pain assessment for all patients before an opioid prescription can significantly impact the opioids crisis in the USA. The stakeholders involved include legislators, practitioners, and pharmacists.”
Introduction
The opioid crisis is a national problem in the United States of America (USA). Opioids, commonly called “pain killers” are medications prescribed to control pain in various medical situations such as cancers, fractures, and post-surgical conditions. When misused, opioids have a chance of causing addiction with severe consequences. The consequences of opioid addiction include mental health problems, kidney diseases, cardiovascular diseases, and even death. Opioids overuse is also a cause of criminality. The addictive opioids include not only various prescribed pain relievers but also other drugs such as heroin and synthetic fentanyl. In the USA, the misuse of opioids has reached a critical level, so that the term “opioids crisis” is now used. Opioids addiction affects people of all socioeconomic statuses. A recent review of Missouri’s opioid crisis, published in 2017, revealed that about 2.9 million persons living in the USA were non-medical users of opioid pain relievers, which was categorized as opioid use disorder (Lewis, et al., 2017). Also, a report by the Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality (2015) revealed that over 50,000 people died in the USA due to drug overdose, with most people being middle-aged and young. The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)(2020) revealed that in 2018, over 67,300 people died from a drug overdose in the USA, which indicates there is a rise in the percentage of people dying as a result of opioid use in America.
To combat the problem of opioids crisis, policies requiring pain assessment before prescribing opioids are being considered. Before exploring the feasibility of such a policy, consider the following points: the consequences of opioids addiction, the perspectives of the stakeholders and the limit of curren...