Surgery Opioid

Like the ED OPIOID study, the Surgery-Opioid study used quality improvement and evaluation methods to measure the success of a multifaceted oxycodone prescribing intervention and its impact on oxycodone prescribing for patients discharged home after an acute surgical admission. The project aimed to optimise oxycodone prescribing, improve patient education (especially to promote simple analgesia) and improve discharge communication by including a de-escalation plan.

Using opioids to treat acute pain in surgical setting is appropriate, but needs to be tailored to individual’s pain requirements. Baseline audits of discharge prescribing in 2015 and 2017 indicated a practice of defaulting to the PBS quantity of 20 oxycodone tablets on discharge prescription. The study also showed suboptimal communication of a pain management plan to the general practitioner.

This may result in inadvertent continuation of oxycodone in the community. The practice evaluation, development and delivery of the intervention and subsequent re-evaluation was undertaken by a team that included the Lead for Acute Pain Services and prescribers within surgery.

The Surgery-Opioid intervention was successful in improving patient care by reducing inappropriate or unnecessary oxycodone prescribing, improving patient education and improving the quality of medical handover to General Practitioners (see figure 3).

Figure 3