The pain scale shares the blame for the opioid crisis in America

If you have ever had surgery or told your doctor about physical pain, no doubt you have heard the question: “How would you rate your pain on a scale of zero to 10, with zero being no pain and 10 being the worst pain you can imagine?” That sounds like a reasonable question, but everyone has a different pain tolerance. In extreme cases, there are individuals who are born with no feeling of pain at all. Therefore, one patient’s two could be another patient’s nine, and both could be telling the truth. There are no other evidence-based findings for pain, especially for patients experiencing non-cancer pain syndrome. The pain scale is a useful tool, but it is certainly not ideal and is adding to the opioid addiction crisis running rampant in our country today. The fundament fiduciary responsibility of physicians is to relieve patient pain. There were concerns in the early 1990s that health care professional are not treating pain quickly and effectively in USA. We physicians were pressured to relieve all the pain as a result of the Fifth Vital Sign program started around 2000. Then, when prescription medication addiction levels rose above the street opioids like heroin, we were the ones to blame. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the amount of opioids prescribed per person in 2015 was three times higher than in 1999. The most serious problem now is physicians that are simply not prescribing narcotics to patients anymore, forcing them to resort to illegal drugs an...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Conditions Pain Management Primary Care Source Type: blogs