Barriers of Access to Opioid Medicines within the Context of Palliative Care in Latin America: The Perception of Health Professionals

BACKGROUND: Different sets of barriers have been identified to explain the difficulties in the access and availability of opioid analgesics in palliative care, particularly in low- and middle-income countries, including Latin America. OBJECTIVE: To validate a structured questionnaire for the access to opioid medicines and to investigate the perception of health professionals regarding access barriers to opioid analgesics in 17 countries of the Latin American Region. DESIGN: Survey to identify the domains and barriers of access to opioid medicines according to health professionals, including physicians, nurses, and pharmacists affiliated to institutions that provide palliative care in Latin America between August 2019 and October 2020. RESULTS: We analyzed responses from 426 health professionals. The median age was 44 years old (ranging from 23 to 73 years) with an average experience in palliative care of 10 years (range: 1–35), 71.8% were women, and 49.8% were affiliated to specialized health care facilities of urban areas (94.6%). The main barriers perceived to be extremely relevant by the respondents were “belief that patients can develop addiction” and “financial limitations of patients” for the patient's domain and the “appropriate education, instruction, and training of professionals” for health professional's domain. CONCLUSIONS: It is necessary to develop strategies to strengthen less-developed health systems of the region to review legal frameworks, ensure integrated palliative care systems, and deploy multidisciplinary strategies for sensitizing, training, and raising the awareness of patients, caregivers and, particularly, health professionals regarding appropriate prescription and rational use of opioid analgesics.