At the Toronto Rehabilitation Institute, Dr. Andrea Furlan, a pain specialist, is holding a regular meeting with some of her colleagues.
Sitting around the table are physiotherapists, pharmacists, doctors and nurses. Other health-care professionals have joined in via teleconferencing.
...
"I have had patients referred to us because their doctors cut them from opioids," said Furlan. "That's ridiculous because they were not addicted. They were not having any complications. They were not on a high dose."
Recent
statistics show that opioid prescriptions dropped in parts of the country last year. That may be due in part to prescribing
guidelines in 2017 that instructed doctors to try to wean their patients off opioids.
The updated guidelines represented a dramatic departure from previous ones in 2010 that focused on how to prescribe the pain killer. The decline in opioid prescriptions could be viewed as an encouraging sign that over-prescribing by physicians is being addressed, but Dr. Mary Lynch, at the QEII Health Sciences Centre's Pain Management Centre in Halifax, said the pendulum has swung too far.
