Prescribing Guidelines and Opioid Stewardship

Abstract

Given the central role that the overuse of prescription opioids has played in the opioid epidemic, prescribing guidelines and opioid stewardship are critical strategies to reduce opioid-related addiction, injury, and death. This chapter highlights why prescribing guidelines are important and can improve the safe and effective use of opioids in clinical practice. Prescribing guidelines represent one important approach to fostering opioid stewardship, although there are many others, including public health surveillance, sound organizational policies, and patient and family engagement. Guidelines provide an efficient means of disseminating best practices to prescribers, patients, and others in a position to influence clinical care, such as policymakers and payers. Rigorously developed guidelines offer a valuable synthesis of the field, and thus serve as an important resource for individuals and organizations looking for an authoritative examination of the evidence base supporting the use of opioids in clinical and community practice.