• Pain Res Manag · Jan 2004

    A survey of cancer pain management knowledge and attitudes of British Columbian physicians.

    • R Gallagher, P Hawley, and W Yeomans.
    • Division of Palliative Care, University of British Columbia, Vancouver. romayne@interchange.ubc.ca
    • Pain Res Manag. 2004 Jan 1;9(4):188-94.

    IntroductionThere are many potential barriers to adequate cancer pain management, including lack of physician education and prescription monitoring programs. The authors surveyed physicians about their specific knowledge of pain management and the effects of the regulation of opioids on their prescribing practices.MethodsA questionnaire was mailed out to British Columbia physicians who were likely to encounter cancer patients. The survey asked for physicians' opinions about College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia regulation and other issues related to their prescribing practices, and assessed basic knowledge of cancer pain management.ResultsThere was a 69% return rate with a total of 4618 evaluable responses. There was a significant difference among medical disciplines, years in practice, number of chronic pain patients seen and size of community of practice. The highest knowledge scores were achieved by oncologists and the lowest scores were from surgeons. Those who practiced in smaller communities had a higher average knowledge score. Those who felt their knowledge about cancer pain was inadequate scored lower than those who felt their knowledge was adequate. The questions most frequently answered incorrectly (or by "don't know") were those about equianalgesic dosing (68%) and adequate breakthrough dosing (45%), revealing knowledge deficiencies that would significantly impair a physician's ability to manage cancer pain.ConclusionsThe details of opioid prescribing are crucial areas to target education for cancer pain management. The surveyed physicians accepted the need for regulation of opioid prescribing with very few being fearful of scrutiny from the College of Physicians and Surgeons of British Columbia. However, the inconvenience of the triplicate prescription pad was more of a barrier to prescribing, it being of concern to 20% of respondents, particularly surgeons and medical specialists.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…