There ’s more to the story of the fired patient

She could have been my charming tiny kindergarten teacher, sitting there nonchalantly in her wheelchair with neatly folded arms in her lap. The delicate, airy cloud of silvery blonde hair on her head resembled Queen Elizabeth’s style. I named her Ms. Elizabeth. A few moments ago, though, she looked like a young child who could not comprehend the meaning of her condition. Whenever she was spoken to, her mind seemed to fixate only on one thing: could her pain management intensity be increased? Due to her chronic pain, Ms. Elizabeth begged for more morphine, more pills and more medication. As a medical scribe, I was tucked away in the corner of the surgical exam room waiting for the doctor to return and hoping for pleasant news for Ms. Elizabeth. I only worked at the hustle-and-bustle pain management clinic for nine months, but it was long enough for me to appreciate the depth of care that could still be offered to patients. Encounters ranged from brief 90-seconds meetings to more complicated cases requiring several phone calls and radiographic analysis. New patients undergo a stepwise process of physical, orthopedic, anesthetic and neurosurgical therapy in addition to oral medications as appropriate for their pain. The last and most invasive treatment for pain management, reserved for patients who failed to derive benefit from multiple surgeries, was a surgically implanted intrathecal pump. Designed to deliver injectable opioid medication directly to the spinal cord for treat...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Physician Pain Management Source Type: blogs