Degree Name
Nursing Practice, DNP
Publication Date
9-20-2025
First Advisor
Lisa Drake
Second Advisor
Kristie Givens
Abstract
Chronic pain is a complex condition that often requires long-term opioid therapy, creating challenges for safe prescribing and patient monitoring. Inadequate screening for opioid misuse risk can contribute to unsafe practices, regulatory noncompliance, and patient harm. Validated instruments such as the Opioid Risk Tool (ORT) and the Current Opioid Misuse Measure (COMM) are available to guide risk assessment, yet their use in everyday practice remains inconsistent. This Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP) quality improvement (QI) project aimed to evaluate whether targeted staff education improved compliance with opioid risk assessment documentation in a rural pain management clinic. A pre-/post-intervention design was used, guided by Donabedian’s Structure–Process–Outcome framework and Lewin’s Change Theory. The project population consisted of clinic staff, including providers and nurses, who received structured education on the administration and documentation of the ORT at initial visits and the COMM during follow-up visits. To evaluate the impact, 100 patient charts were randomly audited 50 prior to and 50 after the educational intervention, for the presence of completed tools. Findings revealed significant improvements. ORT documentation increased from 8% to 88%, χ² (1, N = 100) = 64.10, p < .001, while COMM documentation rose from 4% to 70%, χ² (1, N = 100) = 46.74, p < .001. These results demonstrate that structured staff education and workflow redesign can improve adherence to evidence-based opioid risk screening. Integration into electronic health records and ongoing audits are recommended for sustainability and enhanced patient safety.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Khan, Khairunnisa, "Quality Improvement Project Optimizing Opioid Screening: The Impact of Staff Education in a Pain Management Clinic." (2025). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 221.
https://arch.astate.edu/dnp-projects/221
