Opioids don’t work well for chronic pain. So why do we prescribe them? | Mariam Alexander There’s a temptation to offer desperate patients a solution in a medicine bottle. But long-lasting pain has complex causes
One of the key principles you learn in medical school is that doctors should “do no harm”. But what should doctors do when our patients insist that we do things that we know are harmful? This is the dilemma that thousands of doctors face on a daily basis when tasked with helping patients with chronic pain.
Pain is a universal human experience that alerts us to bodily harm. Most pain is transient and requires no specific intervention other than the passage of time. For more severe acute pain (pain that lasts hours, days or weeks) and cancer pain at the end of life, modern medicine has several very effective treatments – pills, injections and the like. But chronic pain (which persists for months or years) is a very different entity.
Patients who have complex health needs fall between the cracks of services which are designed with policy in mind rather than pathology... The Guardian
One of the key principles you learn in medical school is that doctors should “do no harm”. But what should doctors do when our patients insist that we do things that we know are harmful? This is the dilemma that thousands of doctors face on a daily basis when tasked with helping patients with chronic pain.
Pain is a universal human experience that alerts us to bodily harm. Most pain is transient and requires no specific intervention other than the passage of time. For more severe acute pain (pain that lasts hours, days or weeks) and cancer pain at the end of life, modern medicine has several very effective treatments – pills, injections and the like. But chronic pain (which persists for months or years) is a very different entity.
Patients who have complex health needs fall between the cracks of services which are designed with policy in mind rather than pathology... The Guardian
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