The Berman Institute’s Carlton Haywood Jr. has been awarded $20,000 by the Blaustein Pain Research Fund to study how patients with sickle cell disease feel when caretakers ask them to agree to certain terms prior to receiving opioids for pain management.

Physicians around the country are increasingly asking patients with chronic, non-cancer pain to abide by “opioid agreements” or “opioid contracts” in the wake of growing scrutiny over prescribed narcotics. The excessive use of potentially addictive drugs such as OxyContin has placed intense pressure on doctors to practice caution when prescribing them.

But in reviewing published research on the use of opioid agreements, Haywood said none asked patients with chronic pain how they feel about the use of these documents. The studies also didn’t examine how being asked to sign such contracts might affect the amount of trust and respect that patients feel toward their caretakers.

“We are attempting to rectify this important gap,” says Haywood, an associate faculty member at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics.“If these documents are to be utilized, we feel that their content should be informed by the perspective of the patients who ultimately will be asked to sign them and adhere to their rules.”

Although the development of research protocols has just begun, the grant money will be used to conduct exploratory, descriptive and qualitative research on three focus groups. Haywood and his team also plan to explore the possibility of differences in attitudes about opioid agreements due to patient gender—as well as do preliminary work on a questionnaire that can be used to gather more precise data in future research in this area.

The Blaustein Pain Research Fund, housed at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, awards grants through a committee consisting of pain researchers and faculty at the school.

Media Contact: Michael Pena

410-625-7872;  mpena@jhsph.edu