docs are way too liberal with pain meds. Focus should be on fixing the root causes of pain, not covering them up. Besides, effectiveness of opioids declines over time to the point where all that's left is the addiction, with no corresponding pain reduction. They are just flat out not an effective remedy for chronic pain.
Lots of times the root causes of pain aren’t fixable. It’s easy to blame doctors (or be un-gracious to them
) but all this happened in an environment where hospitals were accredited in part because of how they were assessing and managing pain and use of meds was encouraged.
Also, docs jobs depend on patient satisfaction surveys. You know what is certain to get you low marks? Telling someone in pain they can’t get opioids.
There is plenty of blame to go around for the opioid mess. Docs, drug companies, patients, government, accreditation bodies, the media. No need to pin it all on the physicians.
I admit I have some bias though.
And I think all this is ultimately bad for patients. I think the pendulum probably has swung too far in the other direction.
The reason opioids were used is because they were the best option. There isn’t a great substitute. So now we will have people sitting in pain because we are scared of addiction. It’s hard.
