First, a racial disparity in heart attack care. Now in pain management?
Emergency room doctors are prescribing strong narcotics more often to patients who complain of pain, but minorities are less likely to get them than whites, a new study finds.Even for the severe pain of kidney stones, minorities were prescribed narcotics such as oxycodone and morphine less frequently than whites.
WhiteCoat Rants rips the study a new one:
Congratulations to a bunch of non-emergency physicians who chose the most politically-charged explanation to create a headline-catching journal article for their 15 minutes of fame.
Related posts:
- Treating chronic pain with narcotics and avoiding the risk of addiction
- Kidney stones treated in the emergency department
- Selling narcotics in the parking lot, a subtlety fail for this doctor
- Are whites more likely to be screened for colon cancer?
- Patient satisfaction vs pain relief
- Prescribing narcotics in the Middle East
- Pain management and contradictory articles
KevinMD.com on Facebook
{ 4 comments }
I suppose there’s a big market on the streets of many urban neighborhoods for these Rxs.
First question, If they are referring to outpatient prescriptions Why would anyone prescribe oxycodone or morphine for a kidney stone. Generally they get IV meds, Toradol, MS, or Dilaudid, in the ED and get a home RX of Vicodin. So based on this study, one of the most effective treatments for Kidney Stone being Toradal would be an example of undertreating pain even if it was completely effective and the patient did not need a take home opiod RX.
ERMurse,
The issue I see from the data in the paper is this: suppose doctors are using Toradol for treating kidney stones instead of narcotics. Why would they be using Toradol in lieu of narcotics more often in black patients than white patients?
Were the MDs black or white?
Comments on this entry are closed.