Background

People with opioid use disorder (OUD) are frequently in contact with the court system and have markedly higher rates of fatal opioid overdose. Opioid intervention courts (OIC) were developed to address increasing rates of opioid overdose among court defendants by engaging court staff in identification of treatment need and referral for opioid-related services and building collaborations between the court and OUD treatment systems. The study goal was to understand implementation barriers and facilitators in referring and engaging OIC clients in OUD treatment.

Methods

Semi...

Purpose

As deaths from the illicit drug poisoning crisis continue to rise in Canada, increasing the number of healthcare professionals qualified to effectively prescribe opioids could be beneficial. The willingness of family medicine residents to undertake structured training in prescribing opioids for Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT) and pain management have not been well described.

Materials and methods

Family medicine residents (n = 20) in British Columbia, Canada, were asked about their experience with and willingness to enrol in OAT training. Informed by the Consolidated Framework for...

The ASSIST package, which consists of a brief questionnaire, a guide for health professionals on how to use the questionnaire in detecting and responding to substance use and also a self-help manual for cutting down or stopping substance use, is the result of more than 10-years work by WHO and an international group of researchers in the framework of the WHO ASSIST project. It is WHO’s response to the growing demand for guidance on how to best manage problems of substance use in non specialist health care settings. This approach, quick and easy to learn, useful for all substances including...