Chronic pain is a burden on individuals, the health system, and society. Opioid prescriptions have increased over three decades with the aim of reducing the burden of chronic pain. Unfortunately, increases in opioids have not improved functional outcomes for people with pain and opioid related side-effects and deaths have accompanied the rise in use. Opioid deprescribing (reducing the dose or transitioning off of opioids) has the potential to improve health outcomes for people on opioids for chronic pain. One of the evidence based approaches to deprescribing includes providing an interdisciplinary pain program for individuals to help manage their pain as they reduce their dose or transition off of opioids.
Unfortunately, the inability to access multidisciplinary pain programs is a barrier faced by most people living with pain and their primary care providers. Self-management support has been shown to improve pain and function for people with chronic pain and may be more feasible to offer in primary care to support people as they try to reduce their dose or transition off of opioids. Evidence on the outcomes of pairing self-management support with opioid deprescribing is lacking, however. This study will evaluate the outcomes of the combination of chronic pain self-management support with opioid deprescription, improve our understanding of the experiences and perspectives of patients and healthcare providers with this approach, and determine the characteristics of people on opioids in primary care to inform future research and implementation of this approach. If effective, this approach could be implemented more widely. The results of this study, therefore, have the potential to improve health outcomes for people taking opioid medications for chronic pain.
