Evaluation of a Patient-Centred, Multidisciplinary Opioid Tapering Program for Individuals With Chronic Non-Cancer Pain on Long Term Opioid Therapy

The comprehensive workshops will include a combination of didactic and interactive content on general pain and opioid education (1 hour workshop session to be co-presented by Drs Ryan Amadeo and Dana Turcotte) along with significant psychological content (co-presented by Drs Brigitte Sabourin and Gregg Tkachuk) making up the remainder of the day-long workshop. Content presented in PEWs will include opioid-related risks, identifying personal motivation for (or barriers to) tapering, goal setting, pain self-management, sleep hygiene and comprehensive focus on ACT and rethinking pain. During the interprofessionally co-facilitated sessions, participants will be provided with workbooks that will contain session specific content as well as take-home activities and information for their own personal use.

"The MTP will begin with a Baseline Tapering Visit and will include the same baseline health and well-being questionnaires, a medication review, relevant pain history, relevant opioid use history, discussion re: patient-specific tapering and functional goals, taper start date, and determination if a different opioid formulation will be required for the taper. A detailed taper plan will be prepared and reviewed by the study clinician(s) and provided to the patient. In general, tapers will begin with a 10% reduction of dose every 2 weeks until ⅓ of the original dose is met, or until taper goal has been met. If further tapering is planned once the patient reaches ⅓ of their original dose, the taper will be reduced to half the volume and rate noted above in order to improve tapering success.~Tapering plans and approaches may be changed (slowed, increased, halted etc.) based on follow up."