Depot buprenorphine injections for opioid use disorder:Patient information needs and preferences

Introduction and Aims: There has been significant recent investment in new medications for opioid use disorder, including buprenorphine depot injections. Patients and professionals need good quality, independent information on medications to help them make informed treatment decisions. This paper aims to understand patients’ information needs and preferences in relation to buprenorphine depot injections. Design and Methods: Semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted with 36 people using opioids (26 men, 10 women; 24–63 years). Twelve participants were currently prescribed daily oral methadone; 12 were currently prescribed daily oral buprenorphine; and 12 were using heroin and not in treatment. Interviews were transcribed, coded and analysed via Iterative Categorisation. Results: Participants asked many questions about depot buprenorphine injections. These related to: (i) medication purpose and availability; (ii) pharmacology; (iii) evidence base and effectiveness; (iv) safety and side effects; (v) administration and dosing; and (vi) reducing and ending treatment. Additionally, participants expressed their information preferences in terms of (i) ‘format’ and (ii) ‘source’. Specifically, they wanted printed, verbal and electronic materials provided by people in authority, particularly patients who had already had the medication. Discussion and Conclusions: All potential patients should be offered accessible information on depot buprenorphine to enable them to consider their options and participate meaningfully in treatment decision making. We recommend that further qualitative research is undertaken to produce informative video material that describes patient experiences of receiving depot buprenorphine. This should help to balance biomedical knowledge with lay knowledge, so facilitating more informed discussions when decisions about depot buprenorphine treatment are made.</p

Operations managers\u2019 individual competencies for mass customization

The development of mass-customization capability (MCC) is crucial for a growing number of manufacturing firms nowadays and presents great challenges, especially in the area of operations management. This study aims to provide insights into which individual competencies (ICs) of an operations manager (OM) are important to the MCC of the manufacturing organization the OM works for. A multiple-case study was designed, involving eight machinery manufacturers in one European country, to collect data on their MCC and on the ICs of their OMs. Empirical case data were triangulated with analytical conceptual arguments grounded in the existing literature. The study provides empirical evidence of, and logical explanations for, the fact that OMs working in high-MCC manufacturing organizations use the ICs of negotiation, information seeking, efficiency orientation, analytical thinking, and pattern recognition significantly more often than OMs employed by low-MCC organizations. Future research could replicate this study in other industries and countries, as well as for other managerial roles. The study provides indications for OM selection and training in companies that are pursuing a mass-customization strategy. While the literature on technological and organization-level enablers of MCC has grown considerably, the understanding of its individual-level enablers is still limited and concerns mostly the workforce. This is the first study that relies not on practitioners\u2019 opinions, but on data regarding manufacturers\u2019 MCC and their managers\u2019 ICs to shed light on which managerial competencies are important to a manufacturer\u2019s MCC