[An assessment of physicians attitudes toward opioid usage and opiophobia: Results of a survey from a training and research hospital]

Agri. 2019 Jan;31(1):23-31. doi: 10.5505/agri.2018.03411.
[Article in Turkish]

Abstract

Objectives: When researches examined, cancer pain and other cronic pain, serious mismanagement and undermedication in treating chronic pain especially using opioids continuing problem. This study was designed to examine the barriers to adequate opioid usage, especially as they could be associated with experience and medical discipline.

Methods: The survey conducted among phycians working in Ankara Numune education and research hospital on July of 2015. A 29 item survey was used to measure physicians attitudes and knowledge about using opioids.

Results: We have included 156 doctors in our study.We found that %82.7 of doctors have not been educated in the pain subject.%48.8 of doctors see themselves capable of prescribing opioid medication and %67.9 of doctors are feeling uneasy when prescribing opioids also a lot of doctors are not willing to give prescriptions of opioids.When analyzing our data we have found that opioids related prejudices are not related with title or experience.İt is interesting that the doctors who were anxious when prescribing opioids to their patients they want for themselves when in need opioid precriptions and again when in need they want increasing doses of opioid.

Conclusion: Resembling the studies in the literature in our study, we've found that doctors have poor knowledge about opioids and opiophobia it's frequent among the doctors.Poor knowledge of opioids and overcoming the opiophobia and medicating with opioids when medical status of patients emposes made us think that in service training should be started immeadiately.

MeSH terms

  • Adult
  • Attitude of Health Personnel*
  • Female
  • Hospitals, University
  • Humans
  • Male
  • Middle Aged
  • Opioid-Related Disorders / prevention & control*
  • Pain / prevention & control*
  • Practice Patterns, Physicians'*
  • Surveys and Questionnaires
  • Turkey