Exploring Physicians′ Comfort Level with Opioids for Chronic Noncancer Pain
Bibliographic record
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To explore the attitudes of family physicians (FPs) toward the use of opioids in the management of chronic noncancer pain (CNCP) in the Calgary Health Region (CHR), Calgary, Alberta. METHODS: From January to February 2003, random samples of 147 FPs (32 were used to pretest the instrument and were therefore excluded from the findings) and 142 specialists practicing in the CHR were invited to participate in a 20 min survey to explore aspects of CNCP management in the CHR. Physicians' comfort in prescribing opioids and nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs for CNCP was measured on a four-point ordinal scale. The specialists' subgroup served as a quasi-control group. In addition, a short version of the survey was provided for those physicians who declined to fully partake in the study. This allowed the researchers to compare important characteristics between respondents and nonrespondents. RESULTS: A total of 125 physicians (63 FPs and 62 specialists) participated in the study. The overall response rate was 48.6% and response rates for FPs and specialists were 54.8% and 43.7%, respectively. Response rates for the long version of the survey were 42.6% for FPs (n=49), 31.6% for other specialists (n=45) and 36.6% for both combined. The majority of FPs and specialists (98% and 71.1%, respectively) reported that 'they can handle' nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, Tylenol No 3 with Codeine (Janssen-Ortho/McNeil Consumer Healthcare, Canada) (95.9% and 64.4%, respectively), morphine/MS Contin (Purdue Pharma, Canada) (61.2% and 24.4%, respectively) and Percocet (Bristol-Myers Squibb, Canada)/OxyContin (Purdue Pharma, Canada) (61.2% and 33.3%, respectively). Fewer FPs and specialists report that 'they can handle' Dilaudid (Abbott Laboratories, Canada)/Hydromorph Contin (Purdue Pharma, Canada) (36.7% and 13.3%, respectively), fentanyl patch (30.6% and 11.1%, respectively) and methadone (0% and 6.7%, respectively). Male FPs reported a greater degree of comfort than female FPs regarding morphine/MS Contin, Percocet/OxyContin and Dilaudid/ Hydromorph Contin (Mann-Whitney U tested at alpha <or=0.05). No sex differences were detected among specialists. No relationship was detected between comfort and years of practice or number of chronic pain patients in practice. Among specialists, a weak positive relationship was detected between the degree of comfort with methadone (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient=0.35, alpha=0.03) and the significance of pain management in the practice. Except for methodone, the FPs reported a higher confidence with the drugs in question compared with specialists (alpha
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.008 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".