Chronic Pain Treatment with Opioids NU 608-803: Evidence Based Practice & Quality Improvement in Healthcare Systems

Chronic Pain Treatment with Opioids According to the CDC, in 2020 there was a 16% increase in prescription opioid overdose deaths, which totaled over 16,000 deaths. The increase in opioid usage, prescription and illegal, has become major crisis that requires an intervention. Living with chronic pain is very difficult, but safe pain management is detrimental to ones health. Decreasing risk and misuse of opioids in adult patients being treated for chronic pain should be carefully managed, as a family nurse practitioner (FNP). POI Significance As of 2017, the opioid crisis has been declared as a public health emergency. Overdose deaths increased among all age groups 15 years and older, according to the CDC. As an APN in pain management, if an opiate is the treatment of choice, then monitoring usage and plan of care is important. Education on the risk and addictive properties of opioids should be stressed endlessly to patients. Several screening tools exist in the pain management setting to assess medication use, such as the Opioid Risk Tool (ORT). The ORT screens for family and personal history of substance abuse, age, history of sexual abuse and psychological disease. High risk patients are considered to have increased likelihood of abusive drug related behavior (Webster & Webster, 2005). Three types of healthcare quality measures are used to compare the quality of health care organizations – structure, process, and outcome. Structure measures allow consumers to understand a health care providers capacity to provide high quality care. Process measures demonstrates what a provider does to manage health, such as plan of care. Outcome measures reflect the impact of healthcare interventions by providers. For this topic, the process measure would best reflect the implementation of opioid prescribing guidelines. It would show th