Does brief chronic pain management education change opioid prescribing rates? A pragmatic trial in Australian early-career general practitioners

Abstract

We aimed to evaluate the effect of pain education on opioid prescribing by early-career general practitioners. A brief training workshop was delivered to general practice registrars of a single regional training provider. The workshop significantly reduced hypothetical opioid prescribing (in response to paper-based vignettes) in an earlier evaluation. The effect of the training on actual prescribing was evaluated using a nonequivalent control group design nested within the Registrar Clinical Encounters in Training (ReCEnT) cohort study: 4 other regional training providers were controls. In ReCEnT, registrars record detailed data (including prescribing) during 60 consecutive consultations, on..