{"id":41137,"date":"2017-08-17T07:40:59","date_gmt":"2017-08-17T07:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=41137"},"modified":"2017-08-17T07:40:59","modified_gmt":"2017-08-17T07:40:59","slug":"doctors-from-top-medical-schools-prescribe-fewer-opioid-painkillers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/health\/doctors-from-top-medical-schools-prescribe-fewer-opioid-painkillers.html","title":{"rendered":"Doctors From Top Medical Schools Prescribe Fewer Opioid Painkillers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Doctors From Top Medical Schools Prescribe Fewer Opioid Painkillers<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Doctors who got their training at low-ranked medical schools wrote three times as many opioid painkiller prescriptions as medics who earned their diplomas at Ivy League or other top-tier schools.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s the headline of a new study by two Princeton University researchers who examined two billion opioid prescriptions written in the U.S. between 2006 and 2014 \u2014 and the credentials of the 742,297 physicians who wrote them.<\/span><\/p>\n

And as the U.S. grapples with a deadly opioid overdose epidemic that President Donald Trump declared a national emergency this month, their findings suggest that better training could be key in combating the crisis.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf all general practitioners had prescribed like those from the top-ranked school (Harvard), we would have 56.5 percent fewer opioid prescriptions and 8.5 percent fewer overdose deaths,\u201d said Janet Currie, an economics professor at Princeton\u2019s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.<\/span><\/p>\n

So if \u201cyou\u2019re trying to improve prescribing practices, then targeting the lower-ranked schools might be a good place to start,\u201d Currie added. \u201cMany doctors don\u2019t really receive any training in prescribing pain medications and some of the things they were taught, like opioids are not addictive, were a thing for a time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Opioid overdose deaths have doubled since 2000 and many of those fatalities were caused by drugs that were legally prescribed by physicians. A recent National Institute on Drug Abuse study found that one in three Americans used highly-addictive painkillers like OxyContin or Vicodin in 2015 \u2014 a whopping 91.8 million people.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cPeople on the right talk about all the opioids coming in from Mexico and China, people on the left are always talking about how we need more resources for treatment,\u201d Currie said. \u201cBoth those things are true. But what often gets lost is that people get hooked on opioids when they go to their doctors for back pain and other ailments. We have the resources to identify who those doctors are.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Currie and fellow researcher Molly Schnell culled the prescriptions and prescribing doctors from the market research firm QuintilesIMS and other databases. As for rating the medical schools, the pair relied on the U.S. News & World Report rankings.<\/span><\/p>\n

Among the findings in their study, \u201cAddressing the Opioid Epidemic: Is There a Role for Physician Education?\u201d:<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cGeneral practitioners trained at Harvard wrote an average of 180.2 opioid prescriptions per year, those from the second- to fifth-ranked schools wrote 233 per year, and GPs from the seven lowest-ranked medical schools wrote nearly 550,\u201d Currie said.<\/span><\/p>\n

GPs prescribed half of all the opioids in that time period, some 758.8 million prescriptions. Orthopedic surgeons were a distant second with 147.2 million prescriptions followed by emergency medicine doctors, who wrote 116.5 million.<\/span><\/p>\n

The least amount of opioid prescriptions were written by doctors who treated the elderly (8.6 million), heart patients (8.2 million), and children (7.5 million).<\/span><\/p>\n

When the researchers compared doctors in the same specialty in the same hospital or clinic, the ones from better schools prescribed fewer opioids.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSo the difference is not in the kind of patients they see,\u201d said Currie.<\/span><\/p>\n

In addition to physicians who studied at U.S. medical schools, Currie and Schnell looked at doctors practicing in this country who studied abroad. They discovered that physicians trained in the Canada and Caribbean were also quick to prescribe prescription opioids.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI think doctors in Canada and the Caribbean get training similar to the way they are trained in U.S. medical schools. They are taught to ask about pain and one of the things doctors are evaluated on is how they treat pain, \u201c Currie said. \u201cThat puts lot of pressure on them to do something about patients\u2019 pain.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

But that\u2019s not the case the world over, she added.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEastern European doctors were the least likely to prescribe opioids,\u201d Currie said.<\/span><\/p>\n

Daniel Raymond of the Harm Reduction Coalition suspects part of the reason Ivy League-educated doctors prescribe fewer opioids is because they \u201cend up working in systems that have a broader range of options for their patients.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cA doctor who works for a small practice often doesn\u2019t,\u201d he said. \u201cThen there\u2019s the fact that it\u2019s easier to write a prescription than to talk to a patient about alternatives that don\u2019t involve risky pills.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Either way, the importance of studies like this if they \u201cvalidate calls for more professional pain management training in medical schools,\u201d he said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThe important thing is making these systems work for everybody, wherever they get their health care,\u201d said Raymond.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0http:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/storyline\/americas-heroin-epidemic\/doctors-top-medical-schools-prescribe-fewer-opioid-painkillers-n792911<\/span><\/p>\n

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