Opioid Abuse Pros And Cons

Prescription Painkiller Abuse: The Prescriber’s Perspective Overdosing on prescription painkillers has become an increasing epidemic in today’s society. In fact, prescription opioid addiction has caused 20,101 deaths in the U.S. alone in 2015 (ASAM 2016 Facts). The opioid classification of painkillers include the illicit drugs heroin and cocaine as well as oxycodone, hydrocodone, codeine, morphine, fentanyl and dilaudid. Prescription painkiller abuse is a national crisis because it not only affects the health of the public, but affects social and economic security as well. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, “prescription opioid misuse alone in the United States is $78.5 billion a year, including the costs of healthcare, lost

From this perspective, the prescriber believes it is crucial to look at the patient’s past and current pain management therapies. They also may consider alternative methods for pain control in lieu of opioid medicaments. To make this easier for prescribers, the Center of Disease Control and Prevention published new guidelines for prescribing opioid pain medication. The focus of these guidelines are determining when to initiate or prolong opioid prescriptions, type of opioid, dosage, follow-up, discontinuation, and assessing risk and harm factors opioids entail (CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids). Some prescribers are adamant they follow this proper protocol, and become personally involved to do their best to limit prescription drug abuse. The biggest hurdle to overcome for taking on social responsibility is the potential for unpleasant social confrontations. The strain on the doctor-patient relationship when talking about prescribing opioids can be undermining and

Regardless of the pain of the patient, a few prescribers will only consider alternate ways to relieve their patient’s pain. Alternative medicinal methods to relieve pain include readily available analgesics like NSAIDS and acetaminophen, and anesthetics such as lidocaine. Many prescribers prefer using alternative forms of painkillers so they do not have to worry about the abuse risk involved with their patients. An average of 115 Americans die each day from prescription opioid abuse (Opioid Overdose Crisis). To a lot of prescribers, opioid abuse is such a prevalent issue, that they would rather focus on alternative treatment forms that do not use pharmaceuticals to ease their patients’ pain. They often include physical therapy, massage therapy, and exercise options to patients with chronic pain. Limitations to this perspective might be that they do not properly fulfill a patient’s treatment needs regarding efficacy and the unknown side effects of these alternative treatment