Opioid Stewardship in Practice: Safer Prescribing, Non-Opioid Strategies and Harm Reduction Across Care Settings-FREE NO CME-Module-4

Video Transcription

Video Summary

The micro-learning on opioid stewardship uses Tom, a 65-year-old on chronic opioids, clonazepam, and weekend alcohol use, to highlight overdose prevention in rural/community care. His risk is “stacked” due to age, opioid dose, benzodiazepine use, alcohol, and living alone. Key strategies include routinely offering naloxone, providing nonjudgmental counseling about avoiding alcohol and other sedatives, reviewing the PDMP, considering urine drug testing, involving trusted contacts, and using safer-use practices. The session emphasizes that naloxone is protective, not punitive, and should be normalized like standard safety equipment. It also warns against abrupt opioid or benzodiazepine tapering, which can increase overdose, mortality, and destabilization risk. Tom ultimately agrees to limit alcohol, consider a slow clonazepam taper, and accept take-home naloxone. The main message: patients do not need to stop opioids before clinicians begin reducing overdose risk.

Keywords

opioid stewardship

naloxone

overdose prevention

benzodiazepine taper

rural community care