The Michigan Opioid Safety Score (MOSS): A Patient Safety and Nurse Empowerment Tool

Safely treating postsurgical pain continues to be a challenge, despite more than a decade of focus on its appropriate management. Overuse of opioids and undertreatment of pain continues, as does insufficient monitoring of patients at risk for opioid and pain-related complications. It is clear that relying only on numeric subjective pain scores is inadequate when treating pain. Appropriate bedside evaluation should also include measures of respiration and sedation. Furthermore, assessment of risk should be done with initial pain assessment and continued throughout the pain management course. The recently developed Michigan Opioid Safety Score integrates health risks and objective measures of respiratory rate and sedation, while encouraging the use of multimodal analgesia for all patients.