Description
As part of the MAIA consortium, CATAG has developed the MAIA toolkit for preventing the progression of acute pain to persistent pain. This toolkit will assist Medicines and Therapeutic Advisory Committees to support the implementation of local stewardship opioid analgesic programs and promote effective patient-centred education across the perioperative continuum of care to prevent progression to persistent pain. This toolkit consists of:
- Preventing progression to persistent pain practice tool for Medicines and Therapeutics Advisory Committees
- Preventing progression to persistent pain teaching tool for educators.
Key messages
- Increasing people’s understanding of pain and how thoughts, emotions and behaviours influence their physical functioning and experience of pain, leads to improved outcomes.
- Use the term ‘persistent pain’ rather than ‘chronic pain’ when communicating with people.
- Use collaborative multidisciplinary approaches to pre-emptively provide pain management education when pain is anticipated, to improve outcomes and reduce the risk of persistent pain.
- Analgesia should include multimodal therapies, the judicious use of opioids and management of potential risks associated with analgesics used in pain management pathways.
- Communicate pain medicine discharge plans (PMDPs) to the person or carer and document in the medical records. Include the discharge summary in the records for timely communication to the clinician(s) taking over care e.g. general practitioner (GP).
- Medicines and Therapeutics Advisory Committees should promote:
- opioid analgesic stewardship programs within their hospitals
- effective communication of pain medicine discharge plans (PMDPs) to clinicians, people and carers by embedding tools into electronic medicines management systems, and frameworks into policies and procedures.