Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-xm8r8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-06-28T03:07:01.018Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Medical Education for Pain and Addiction: Making Progress toward Answering a Need

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Sidney H. Schnoll  and
James Finch
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Pain is one of the most frequent presenting symptoms for patients who come to a physician's office. Despite the frequency of this presentation, little consistent, systematic information is provided to medical students or physicians about the treatment of pain. In addition, relatively little information is given about the recognition and prevention of drug abuse and about how to prescribe analgesics rationally to minimize the chances for abuse. This lack of educational preparation for both pain and addiction contributes to significant fear and inability on the part of health professionals to diagnose and treat both conditions. It creates a barrier of fear to prescribe adequate doses of pain medications for patients who present with both acute and chronic pain problems. Inadequate medicating can be caused by the physician's overriding worry about creating addiction in a patient. Morgan has called this problem “opiophobia.”

Type
Article
Information
Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics , Volume 22 , Issue 3 , Fall 1994 , pp. 252 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 1994

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Morgan, J.P., “American Opiophobia: Customary Underutilization of Opioid Analgesics,” Advances in Alcohol Substance Abuse, 5 (1986): 163–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horvatich, P.K. Schnoll, S.H., “Filling the Knowledge Gap: A Continuing Medical Education Course on Prescribing Drugs with Abuse Potential,” New York State Journal of Medicine, 91, supp. (1991): 40S–42S.Google Scholar
Porter, J. Jick, H., “Addiction Rare in Patients Treated with Narcotics,” N. Engl. J. Med, 302 (1980): 123.Google Scholar
Mark, R.M. Sachar, E.J., “Undertreatment of Medical Inpatients with Narcotic Analgesics,” Annals of Internal Medicine, 78 (1973): 173–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savage, S.R., “Addiction in the Treatment of Pain: Significance, Recognition, and Management,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 8 (1993): 265–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebeskind, J.C., “Pain Can Kill,” Pain, 44 (1991): 3–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, Clinical Practice Guideline—Acute Pain Management: Operative or Medical Procedures and Trauma vs. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service (Rockville: DHHS/PHS, 1992).Google Scholar
Weissman, D.E. Haddox, J.D., “Opioid Pseudoaddiction: An Iatrogenic Syndrome,” Pain, 36 (1989): 363–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, supra note 7.Google Scholar
Savage, supra note 5.Google Scholar
Clark, H.W. Sees, K.L., “Opioids, Chronic Pain and the Law,” Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, 8 (1993): 297–305; and Weissman, D.E. Joranson, D.E. Hopwood, M.B., “Physicians’ Knowledge and Attitudes about Opioid Analgesic Regulations,” Wisconsin Medical Journal, 90 (1991): 671-75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, supra note 7.Google Scholar
Ibid.Google Scholar