ER Docs Give Whites Narcotics More Often

[struggle4progress]

By CARLA K. JOHNSON – 1 hour ago

CHICAGO (AP) — ... The analysis of more than 150,000 emergency room visits over 13 years found differences in prescribing by race in both urban and rural hospitals, in all U.S. regions and for every type of pain ...

The study appears in Wednesday's Journal of the American Medical Association. Prescribing narcotics for pain in emergency rooms rose during the study, from 23 percent of those complaining of pain in 1993 to 37 percent in 2005.

The increase coincided with changing attitudes among doctors who now regard pain management as a key to healing. Doctors in accredited hospitals must ask patients about pain, just as they monitor vital signs such as temperature and pulse ...

The irony, <Linda Simoni-Wastila of the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Pharmacy> said, is that blacks are the least likely group to abuse prescription drugs. Hispanics are becoming as likely as whites to abuse prescription opioids and stimulants, according to her research. She was not involved in the current study ...

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gqElvwUttmeWdb-Kgt0CiebJ2lGwD8TTALN80

[aquart]

1. Pain management in this nation is insane.

[Warpy]

2. The only sanity is opiates OTC

for any patient whose pain has been evaluated by a qualified physician and found not to be treatable by other means, like surgery or physical therapy.

Even hard core addicts have been found to reach a steady dose level and not exceed it, although there is no upper level at which opiates are fatal for those who are dependent on high doses.

Street crime would plummet and we'd have a much more civil society. Chronic pain makes one CRANKY. That's my excuse, anyway.

[aquart]

3. I know. Using the drugs for real pain does NOT cause addiction.

I don't know why they keep lying about it. My sister will NEVER be out of pain. NEVER. She's a workaholic who can't work except in brief spurts in which she automatically overdoes it. She is being destroyed by our country's pain management policies. If she was British, she wouldn't be in agony.

[ThomCat]

4. pain management in this country is so inconsistant

and so rarely available that it's hard to say that we have a pain management field at all in this country. What we have is scattered doctors who try.