Muhammad Nadeem, Muhammad Farooq, Sadiq Hussain, Shazia Siddiq, Sajid Razzaq, Tufail Hussain Tahir.
Effects of Guidelines on Opioid Analgesic`s Prescription among Practicing Doctors in Rawalakot City: an Important Step to Prevent Opioid Misuse & Overuse.
Med Forum Jan ;31(1):111-4.

Objective: To quantify the effects of dissemination & implementation of updated guidelines to achieve reduction &promotion of judicious prescription of opioid analgesics. Study Design: Experimental descriptive study Place and Duration of Study: This study was conducted at Sheikh Khalifa Bin Zayad Alnayan Hospital (CMH) Rawalakot from January to October 2019. Materials and Methods: Summary of updated guidelines, agreed by a panel of experts,for opioid analgesic`s prescription was circulated along with personal communications to 94 practicing doctors; 42 General physicians,5 dental surgeons,42 specialists & 5 postgraduate trainees. They were requested to read and implement the guidelines. After few weeks to months; on second visit, feedback of effects of these guidelines was collected through a well designed Performa. Results: Out of 94 doctors, 71 (75.5%) were male and 23 (24.5%) were female. Majority of doctors(94.68 %) doctors stated that their overall rate of opioid analgesic`s prescription has decreased; on average by51% with maximum 95% and minimum 10%.Knowledge about safe and effective opioid prescription has increased in 97.87%. Assessment of risk factors was started by 93.61 % and patient`s counseling by 88.29 % of doctors. Conclusion: Educating the practicing doctors about Updated Guidelines on opioid analgesic`s prescription has significantly reduced the opioid prescription rate along with improvement in its judicious prescription. It is an important step to prevent opioid and overuse.

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