Putting Together the Pieces of the Puzzle: The Development of an Opioid Abuse Triage Checklist for Emergency Departments

Abstract

The Opioid Epidemic continues to spread throughout the United States. Fatalities due to overdose, addiction, and secondary consequences escalate every year, with the death toll predicted to reach approximately 72,000 in 2019. Opioid addiction presents as a complex clinical experience, with various populations, symptoms, and stories involved. This population of people suffering from opioid dependency unfortunately lacks the proper venues to receiving their standard of care. Rather, they use the Emergency Department, a gateway to healthcare for most demographics, as their typical source of care. A literature review of this field led to the conclusion that one method of increasing treatment efficacy and efficiency for victims of opioid abuse in Emergency Departments involves the creation of an Opioid Abuse Triage Checklist. This checklist allows for the rapid categorization and prediction of potential victims of opioid abuse through the use of the acronym “DOSES.” The summation of each demographic represented by each letter of the checklist allows healthcare practitioners to comprehensively search for every aspect of the patient population. Future studies aim to statistically and clinically verify this checklist in order to check for comprehensiveness of the patient population and efficacy in targeting potential victims of opioid abuse.