I think one advantage of the recent national opioid guidelines was that they were truly an interprofessional approach to the treatment of pain. For that reason I'm quite optimistic, because, really, it suggests that there's not simply a prescriber and a patient working together, but an entire team that helps to prevent situations in which the patient gets into trouble. It's truly an interprofessional approach in which there's support for the patient, to steer them away, and to do, say, medication reviews at the pharmacy level. But at every touch-point that patient has with the health care system, there's this common knowledge and a common support system so we can prevent patients from falling through the cracks and getting into addictive situations.
On December 2nd, 2013. See this statement in context.