Brief motivational interviewing–based interventions for opioid misuse in hospital settings.
Julia D. Buckner, Katherine Walukevich‐Dienst, Kathleen Crapanzano, Raymond P. Tucker, L. Lee Tynes
Abstract
Opioid misuse and opioid use disorder (OUD) are significant public health concerns, yet treatment seeking for opioid misuse remains low. Hospitals are an ideal setting to identify and intervene with individuals who misuse opioids to encourage them to seek OUD treatment following discharge. Yet, patients who present in these settings often present for reasons other than opioid misuse, suggesting that interventions may need to strive to increase awareness of concerns regarding misuse and intrinsic motivation to decrease opioid misuse and seek OUD treatment. Although interventions that include techniques to increase intrinsic motivation to decrease problematic substance use behaviors show promise for alcohol and other substances, less work has examined their utility for opioid misuse. The current review is the first known review of the extant literature of hospital-based motivation-based interventions for opioid misuse. The results indicate that there is not yet compelling evidence that brief interventions that include motivation-based interventions work in the absence of concurrent pharmacotherapy and/or referrals to local postdischarge treatment providers. The results also indicate that the utility of these interventions may vary as a function of hospital setting (e.g., emergency department, internal medicine clinic) and the severity of opioid misuse. Future directions for research in this area are proposed.