From USA TODAY:
Article “Ending painkiller abuse requires doctor training, drug czar says” reports: “To halt prescription drug abuse, the nation’s fast-growing drug problem, Congress must require special training for doctors and other health care workers before they are allowed to prescribe powerful drugs such as OxyContin, White House drug czar Gil Kerlikowske said Tuesday.
The Obama administration’s Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention Plan calls on Congress to amend the Controlled Substances Act with a new requirement: that health care practitioners learn appropriate uses for opioid medicines and how to screen patients for drug abuse before they can get a Drug Enforcement Administration license to prescribe controlled substances. Opioids, such as hydrocodone, are synthetic drugs that mimic the effects of opium and can be used to treat severe pain. They can be highly addictive.
Comment posted under USA Today article rebuts: “According to the July issue of Anesthesia & Analgesia, the official publication of the International Anesthesia Research Society and published by Lippincott Williams & Wilkins Dr. Frank Brennan of Calvary Hospital in Kogarah, N.S.W., Australia writes that “Medicine is at an inflection point, at which a coherent international consensus is emerging: the unreasonable failure to treat pain is poor medicine, unethical practice, and is an abrogation of a fundamental right.””
The position of Common Sense for Drug Policy is that physicians very much require additional training for the prescribing of opiates. However, the greater problem is prescribing too little at the onset of trauma. Knowledgeable physicians are fearful of losing their licenses and even going to jail if they follow professional ‘best practice’ standards.
Excerpts from relevant government studies and peer reviewed articles on pain management can be viewed here.
