Opioid Safety and
Take-Home Naloxone
On this page you will find information relating to opioid safety and take-home naloxone.
Introduction
Chronic pain is complex, and each person experiences it differently. In Australia, chronic pain affects the quality of life of more than 3.7 million people. Due to limited treatment options, a lack of services, and extremely long wait times across the country for pain specialist treatment, medicines are often the mainstay of treatment for people living with chronic pain. Some medicines such as paracetamol and non-steroidal anti-inflammatories can play a role within a multidisciplinary, best-practice approach to managing chronic pain for many consumers. Analgesics such as pregabalin, opioids, aspirin, paracetamol, and paracetamol with codeine are among the most prescribed drugs in Australia, all of which are for pain relief.
Over the past few years there have been a number of changes to the prescribing of opioids with an increase in government regulation that took effect in 2021. While Painaustralia supported the reforms to address the inappropriate use of opioids, they were not well implemented and on top of that access to best practice care for chronic pain remains difficult and unaffordable. We have always called for a holistic response to the issue of opioid use and the regulations did have ramifications for many people who were prescribed opioids for their chronic pain at the time. We continue to call for better education in the quality use of medicines, best practice pain management, and equitable and affordable access to treatments for chronic pain. In the meantime, we continue to work with organisations and governments to remove the stigma associated with those consumers who are prescribed and use opioids.
One such project has been the Opioid Safety Toolkit developed to empower consumers on safer prescription use. The Opioid Safety Toolkit is an innovative resource that provides consumers with the knowledge and tailored information to identify their own opioid-related risks, make more informed decisions about their pain management and offers guidance to develop an opioid safety plan to help prevent or response to severe side effects.
For further information about opioids and take-home naloxone for consumers and health professionals please find the below links.
https://www.tga.gov.au/products/medicines/prescription-medicines/prescription-opioids-hub
New Opioid Safety Toolkit to empower consumers on safer prescription opioid use - Monash University
Take Home Naloxone program | Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care
Take Home Naloxone Program - Pharmacies - The Pharmacy Guild of Australia
Help your patients create an opioid safety plan - Pharmaceutical Society of Australia
Opioid Safety Toolkit
About the Opioid Safety Toolkit (or What is the Opioid Safety Toolkit?)
The Opioid Safety Toolkit is a comprehensive evidence based resource for consumers to support safer and effective use of prescription opioids.
The Toolkit has been co-designed with consumers and medical experts through a comprehensive co-design process.
The Toolkit was developed as part of a collaboration been Monash University, Painaustralia, the Pharmaceutical Society of Australia (PSA), and the Burnet Institute.
To find out more about the Opioid Safety Toolkit, go to: https://saferopioiduse.com.au/
What does the Opioid Safety Toolkit include?
The Opioid Safety Toolkit provides personalised and tailored information about factors that can increase your opioid-related risks. It includes guidance on:
- developing an Opioid Safety Plan to help prevent or respond to severe opioid side effects
- using the Routine Opioid Outcome Monitoring (ROOM) tool to help monitor your outcomes with your pain medicines
Developing an Opioid Safety Plan
It is important to develop an Opioid Safety Plan for yourself and people around you, even if you don’t think you are at risk of severe opioid side effects. Having an Opioid Safety Plan in advance means you have steps in place to prevent or respond to an opioid emergency (sometimes known as an overdose). An opioid overdose can happen to anyone.
To find out more or to create your own opioid safety plan, click here.
About Naloxone
Naloxone is a life-saving medicine that reverses an opioid overdose by blocking opioid effects in the brain; yet only 2 per cent of people prescribed opioids have naloxone at home. Naloxone is available as a nasal spray and an injectable and is free from Australian pharmacies. The national Take Home Naloxone program is a critical step in reducing overdose deaths by increasing access to this potentially life-saving medicine and providing individuals, families, friends, and community members with the ability to respond quickly to opioid overdose and potentially save a life.
As part of your Opioid Safety Plan, it is important to have naloxone at hand. Naloxone is a medicine that reverses the effects of opioids, which allows enough time for emergency services to arrive. You may never need naloxone, but if you have opioids in the home, we recommend you have naloxone in the home, just in case.
To find out more about naloxone and how to use it click here.
You can also watch this video below which tells you about naloxone.
Naloxone is available for free without a prescription from community pharmacies. To read more about the Take Home Naloxone program, click here. To find the closest pharmacy to you which provides free naloxone click here.
Monitoring your opioid outcomes
The Routine Opioid Outcome Monitoring (or ROOM) is a tool to help people who are prescribed opioid medication, to measure pain, side effects and general health outcomes. It is a quick and easy to complete and can be done online via this link (https://saferopioiduse.com.au/room-tool). You can also download a copy of the ROOM tool which can be completed with a healthcare provider like your GP or before an appointment and used as part of a discussion about your pain management plan.
Consumer testimonials
“As a person who uses opioids for pain, reviewing the opioid safety toolkit website has encouraged me to obtain some naloxone for safety. Even though I class myself as low risk, it is still not zero risk so I would feel better knowing there was naloxone at home just in case.”
“It has made me motivated to do the plan and go to my pharmacist to get the naloxone. It is something I have been putting off for a long time but know that it is the right thing to do especially with children in the house.”
“The toolkit was super user friendly with clear, relevant information. The toolkit was also non-judgemental and practical. It's super useful to have all the opioids info and harm minimisation info in one place.”
Our Reports
Impact of opioid regulatory reforms on people living with chronic pain survey report
Painaustralia's report, Impact of opioid regulatory reforms on people living with chronic pain details the first-hand experiences of consumers since the changes were introduced by the Australian Government in June 2020.
The survey, which spanned an eight-week period from December 2020 until February 2022 attracted over 1,800 respondents.
The main themes that emerged within our report were:
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the lack of access to alternative services available for people with chronic pain, in the absence of medication;
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difficulties in accessing medication; feelings of judgement and stigma;
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decreased quality of life; poorer mental health;
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increased visits to GPs and other health professionals resulting in increased and unwanted costs to consumers; and;
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the need for education and awareness campaigns for consumers and health professionals
As a result of this, we recommend:
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increased support for people living with chronic pain, including the creation of a dedicated helpline to address mental health and provide referrals to alternative pathways and support groups;
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additional funding for new items under the Medicare Benefits Scheme to give greater access to allied health services and group pain management programs;
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continuous and additional education and awareness campaigns to help reduce stigma and provide clear pathways to alternate treatments for consumers and health professionals.
We would like to extend our gratitude to the consumers who took the time to put in a response to our survey. You can read our report here.
Impact of 2020 opioid reforms on people living with chronic pain survey report
This report provides an analysis of a survey conducted by Painaustralia to gauge how people with chronic pain have been impacted by the opioid reforms implemented on 1 June 2020.
Painaustralia received an overwhelming response to the survey, which had nearly 600 responses over the course of 10 days. The survey also drew commentary from consumers on social media platforms, with nearly 300 comments on the original post. Overwhelmingly, consumers have reported further creation of additional and significant barriers to pain management for an already vulnerable cohort.
As Painaustralia has reported to the Opioid Regulatory Advisory Group and the Opioid Reform Communications Committee, the chronic pain community had already been reporting adverse health outcomes from the impact of the bushfires. The subsequent pandemic and corelated challenges in accessing primary and preventative care services have had a major effect on the chronic pain community. The rollout of significant reforms on 1 June have exacerbated challenges faced by people living with chronic pain, as has been demonstrated by the several calls from distressed consumers, many who mention suicidal ideation.
Our Blogs
In the wake of recent changes to the availability of pain medicines, many in our networks have asked what medicine scheduling means and how it affects them.
If you are walking down the street and stopped by police, you’d certainly rather have just picked up a schedule 2 substance than a schedule 9. If you are feeling ill and need relief, your GP may prescribe you a schedule 4 medicine. What does this all mean? Let me explain.
In June 2020, PBS changes were introduced along with new regulatory changes aimed at restricting the long-term use of opioids. These changes were implemented to reduce hospitalisations and deaths caused by opioids. Some of the associated measures included reducing pack sizes of opioid medications to just 10 tablets, restricting repeat prescriptions and encouraging doctors to wean their patients off the drugs where possible while not prescribing to ‘opioid naïve’ people...
“The opioid reforms have been accompanied by a dramatic increase in stigma around not just opioid medications but also chronic pain itself. Healthcare professionals are now even more predisposed to approach chronic pain patients as though they are drug-seekers. And it hasn’t gotten any easier or cheaper to access alternatives to medications.”...
Over the course of the past couple of months, our office has been inundated. Since the rollout of the opioid prescribing changes on 1 June, our staff, along with the chronic pain community and prescribers, have been caught in the impact of these significant reforms...
Updated November 2024