New opioid prescribing guidelines shaping medical education in Halifax

Ottawa rolled out new prescription guidelines for opioids this week and Dalhousie University plans on bringing that information to the classroom.

“We want to make sure that our students and our practicing physicians, are using the most appropriate, the best evidence, in prescribing these drugs to the patients who really need them,” Dr. David Anderson said, the dean of medicine at Dalhousie’s Medical School.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "We want to make sure that our students and our practicing physicians, are using the most appropriate, the best evidence, in prescribing these drugs to the patients who really need them," Dr. David Anderson said, the dean of medicine at Dalhousie's Medical School.

READ MORE: New prescription guidelines aim curb growing opioid crisis in Canada

Health Canada is treating widespread opioid addiction and overdoses as a national health crisis.

The new guidelines are part of a national plan called Health Canada’s Opioid Action Plan.

“Twenty years ago it was felt that pain control and basically getting rid of pain was the goal in patients that had pain,” Anderson said.

Last year, 54 people died in Nova Scotia from acute opioid toxicity.

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Those statistics come from the Nova Scotia Medical Examiners Office and according to Dr. Gus Grant, the registrar at Nova Scotia’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, that number climbs higher the further west you go.

“One thousand people died in British Columbia last year from overdoses, so three jumbo-jets went down,” Grant said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "One thousand people died in British Columbia last year from overdoses, so three jumbo-jets went down," Grant said.

READ MORE: ‘I couldn’t live without it’: Young Vancouver entrepreneur speaks out about opioid addiction

Grant was one of 13 people who sat on the panel for the new guidelines.

While there are many elements involved in the final draft, he said there’s one takeaway that leads the rest.

It’s evidence that Anderson said medical residents and practicing physicians will learn through new education modules informed by the guidelines.

“We teach on a number of different levels. Medical students that are training to become doctors, doctors that are training to become specialists or family physicians and we also train physicians in practice for their continuing education and professional development. We’ll be using these guidelines in all these areas of training,” he said.