Further Validation of an Opioid Risk Assessment Tool: The Brief Risk Questionnaire

Opioid risk assessment and risk stratification has become a standard of care when prescribing opioid medications for chronic pain conditions. Research to date has shown that different risk assessment tools yield different accuracies in predicting future medication aberrant behavior. This study offers further validation data on a new opioid risk assessment tool, the Brief Risk Questionnaire (BRQ). The BRQ was compared to the Brief Risk Interview (BRI), the Opioid Risk Tool (ORT), and the Pain medication Questionnaire (PMQ) in their ability to predict medication aberrant behavior at six-month follow-up. Two hundred ninety-nine (299) patients were assessed. One-hundred forty-two patients were later treated with opioid medications and the presence or absence of medication aberrant behavior was recorded at six month follow-up. Results found that the BRQ was able to predict future medication aberrant behavior as well as other risk measures and appear as good an overall predictive tool as other commonly used measures. The BRQ has less specificity when compared to other patient-completed risk assessment tools and the implications of this are discussed. This study indicates that the BRQ could be a useful tool for clinicians in conducting opioid risk assessment.