My Emergency Room Horror Story

[Aristus]

76. I'm sorry, I have to disagree with you on that, except in the absolute sense

that I'm not a doctor. I am a Physician Assistant working in primary care, and I have people coming in all the time seeking narcotic pain meds. See my post above.

One of them is a patient I treated according to a plan that Barack America above laid out: rest, physical therapy (to treat the underlying condition, instead of simply masking the pain), weight loss, ice/heat treatment, ice massage, etc. I even started her on a medication regimen that is the new standard of care for long term pharmaceutical use for chronic pain: tricyclic antidepressants (which are kind of a double-barreled shotgun for the treatment of chronic pain; chronic pain can cause depression, and depression can worsen chronic pain; TCA's interrupt the vicious cycle.) I even gave her a free bottle of amitriptyline, and instructed her to give the meds 3-4 weeks to get up to a therapeutic level.

One hour after she left the clinic, my scheduler came to my office and told me the patient had returned to the clinic, gave back her bottle of amitriptyline, and demanded a narcotic.

On another day, a new patient presented to the clinic to establish care. She asked the scheduler if I would prescribe her oxycodone. When the scheduler relayed to her my refusal to prescribe this med, the patient said: "I've been to five places already, and no one will give me any!"

Drug-seekers are out there, and they'll seek wherever they think they can get what they want...