It's hard to argue against improved information, and I think we would all agree that the more information we have when it comes to making that prescribing decision, the better it is, both about the drugs we're prescribing and certainly about the individual patient and the risks they bring when they are on the receiving end of that prescribing decision.
Having said that, I think we in family medicine are used to making decisions—and important ones—based on incomplete information. We do it all the time. Unfortunately, uncertainty and ambiguity are our constant companions in the work we do every day. So I think the truth is that most of the difficulties we see in prescribing are based on decisions that are made with the best possible intentions. What we attempt to build in are certainly supports for the information we have when we make that decision as well as other kinds of supports to clinical decision-making.
In Ontario, for instance, there is an opioid prescribing mentorship network that has been created by the Ontario College of Family Physicians that links family physicians to others—pain and addiction specialists as well as other family physician colleagues—so that when they run up against a particularly difficult decision around this prescribing conundrum, they have a group of colleagues they can refer to on a relatively instant basis to help them make that decision.