We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
Opioid Treatment Agreements Repurposed-But Who Monitors the Monitors?
- Authors
Payne, Richard
- Abstract
In this issue of the Hastings Center Report, Joshua Rager and Peter Schwartz reframe the justification for the use of opioid treatment agreements. Instead of documents used to define the roles and responsibilities of doctors and patients to one another in the course of opioid treatment for chronic pain and to describe the risks and benefits of therapy for the individual, OTAs are now proposed for use as 'surveillance and monitoring' instruments. As such, they are specifically meant to disclose the risks of opioid therapy and to describe the other processes and tools used to monitor abuse and diversion of medications. Given the crisis of the opioid overdose and death epidemic, along with this repurposing of OTAs as disclosure documents primarily, Rager and Schwartz argue that patient consent is not needed (although desired) and that OTAs should be universally applied in clinical practices. We can all agree on the big picture goal of limiting the number of opioid prescriptions in order to minimize the tragedy of opioid overdose deaths. We disagree, though, about the acceptable level of collateral damage to people in pain who fall victim to fighting the war against the so-called opioid epidemic.
- Subjects
DRUG overdose; INFORMED consent &; ethics; SUBSTANCE abuse prevention; THERAPEUTIC use of narcotics; ANALGESICS; CHRONIC pain; PHYSICIANS; NARCOTICS; ETHICS; PREVENTION
- Publication
Hastings Center Report, 2017, Vol 47, Issue 3, p36
- ISSN
0093-0334
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1002/hast.705