Profession
Reluctant to prescribe
■ An occasional snapshot of current facts and trends in medicine.
Quick View. Posted Aug. 6, 2007
Pain specialists' message that opioids are not just for patients with cancer is not quite getting through to physicians in training.
Across the board, residents were much more reluctant to prescribe opioids for noncancer patients, said a recent survey of 72 residents. That could be due to poor training, inexperience or fear of legal or regulatory scrutiny, study authors said. Researchers asked residents to react to the statements on a scale of zero ("strongly disagree") to 10 ("strongly agree"). The figures represent an average of the students' responses.
Source: "Medical residents' beliefs and concerns about using opioids to treat chronic cancer and noncancer pain: A pilot study," Journal of Rehabilitation Research & Development, Vol. 44, No. 2












