Faye’s story: good practice when prescribing opioids for chronic pain
These resources highlight the difficulties in prescribing opioids to manage chronic pain and offer advice and guidance to all healthcare professionals who are responsible for administering them.
- Prescribing opioids for chronic pain: lessons for healthcare professionals – Faye’s story, as told by her parents, illustrates what can happen when things go wrong and the key messages that they wish all healthcare professionals to consider.
- Controlled drugs newsletter: prescribing opioids for chronic pain -This newsletter looks at the issues relating to prescribing opioids for chronic pain.
Opioids are effective analgesics for acute pain and end of life care, however they are of limited use for long term chronic pain. Side effects are very common and up to a quarter of patients taking opioids long term have developed a dependence on them. Long term opioid prescribing for chronic non-cancer pain is becoming an increasing issue in England; as highlighted by the British Medical Association.
Faye’s story is also told in video form to put these potential dangers into reality by describing, from her parent’s perspective, the sequence of events that ultimately led to her untimely death from respiratory depression. The video highlights the difficulties in prescribing opioids to manage chronic pain and offers advice and guidance to all healthcare professionals who are responsible for administering them.
Related content
- Opioids Aware: A resource for patients and healthcare professionals to support prescribing of opioid medicines for pain
- National Institute for Health and Care Excellence: Chronic pain (primary and secondary) in over 16s: assessment of all chronic pain and management of chronic primary pain
- Faculty of Pain Medicine: Surgery and Opioids: Best Practice Guidelines 2021