Prescription opioid abuse is on the political radar. “Painkillers” are a recognized cause of thousands of deaths a year. But what to do about it?
A FDA panel recently recommended mandatory training for physicians who prescribe opioids. Congress passed a bill calling for more education, presumably physicians as a prime target. We’ve actually been down this road before, but possibly not how you think.
The politicians and pundits used to complain that pain was undertreated. An article was published in William Mitchell Law Review in 2000 with a subsection labeled “The Cultivation of Ignorance.” In it, the authors wrote, “… the answer to the obvious question of why caregivers fail to provide adequate pain relief to patients in so many instances when it is in their power to do so, is … physicians are poorly trained to manage pain properly. They rely on drugs … prescribe too small doses, and often wait for pain before they do something.”
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