St George’s Medical School (University of London) and the SSA produced a user-friendly set of factsheets to help integrate knowledge of substance use into the undergraduate medical curriculum. This factsheet examines palliative care for people with substance use problems. After reading the factsheet, medical students will recognise that:
- taking an adequate pain history and exploring addiction issues enable appropriate interventions to be offered
- it is important to ensure that patients already receiving opioid substitution for dependence receive adequate analgesia
- it is important to observe and evaluate emerging addictive behaviours (including drug-seeking) in patients with life-limiting conditions
- it is appropriate to counsel patients who are reluctant to take medication they regard as ‘addictive’
