Clinician Resources: Opioid Stewardship

Opioid stewardship

 

The AMA Queensland Council established the Opioid Stewardship Roundtable (OSRT) to provide considered and expert advice regarding best practice in opioid management for acute pain. Four key principles guided the OSRT’s activities: 

  • avoiding the use of slow-release opioids for acute pain 
  • encouraging practitioners to consider whether patients would benefit from prescription of atypical over conventional opioids 
  • documenting an opioid treatment and tapering plan  
  • communicating that plan to the patient’s general practitioner. 

The OSRT was also tasked with publishing educational materials to improve opioid prescribing and deprescribing practices in private hospitals. This included facilitating better integration with general practice to ensure continuity of care that incorporates opioid treatment and tapering plans.  

Set out below are key documents to encourage the adoption of best practice opioid management by clinicians in, and GPs receiving patients discharged from, private hospitals and by those private facilities themselves. 

AMA Queensland strongly encourages all practitioners and hospital administrators to consider tailoring the Opioid Tapering Plan materials, including the ‘Post-Operative Pain Management Plan’ and Example Discharge Medications Template ‘Pain Medicine Plan After Leaving Hospital’ produced by the Opioid Stewardship Working Party (OSWP), to suit their own, their patients’ and their hospital’s needs. 

OSWP Opioid Tapering Plan materials 

Please note: AMA Queensland strongly recommends practitioners and hospital administrators tailor this template to suit individual clinicians, patients and hospitals. 

Additional resources