Abstract

Recently, due to a number of converging factors, there have been significant shifts in public policy regarding the legitimacy of treating chronic pain with opioids. Traditional tenets handed down in medical, dental, nursing, and pharmacy education created a distinct reluctance on the part of practitioners to prescribe opioids on a continual basis. Much has been written about the reasons for these attitudes. One of the barriers that is very consistently reported by prescribers is the fear of regulatory and legal repercussions to ongoing prescription of this class of medications. It is in this arena that sentinel changes have occurred, the most recent of which is the promulgation of a document prepared by the Federation of State Medical Boards, which suggests a set of guidelines meant to be endorsed or adopted by individual medical licensing boards on how to approach this particular aspect of practice. These guidelines, representing a broad consensus from a wide constituency, were developed in a relatively open forum and detail a balanced approach to the prescription of opioids for chronic pain.