Newly started primary care opioid prescriptions plateaued in 2018-2019

Our new study published in the Canadian Journal of Addiction found plateauing rates of new starts of opioid analgesics in British Columbia in 2018-2019. We wanted to find out how many and what kind of opioid prescriptions were started to opioid naïve patients by family physicians in British Columbia. (more…)
Mentoring helps physicians publish more peer-reviewed papers, study says

Physician scientists help advance the science of addiction medicine, yet prior studies have not looked at better ways of increasing publication productivity of early-career physicians working in this field.
Individualized prescribing portraits to reduce inappropriate initiation of opioid analgesics to opioid naïve patients in primary care, REDONNA trial

REDONNA is a mixed-methods randomized study testing the effectiveness of individualized prescribing Portraits to reduce inappropriate initiation of opioid analgesics. The Contemporary Clinical Trials journal recently published REDONNA’s study protocol.
Does this opioid naïve patient really need potent opioids? Think twice

Think Twice, exercise caution and generally avoid making assumptions about patient risk of subsequent prescription opioid use disorder, write authors of a recent editorial. (more…)
Can stimulants treat stimulant use disorder?
This ‘systematic overview of reviews’ assembled the evidence for stimulant use disorder treatments from the systematic reviews of literature.