Originally Posted by lckrn
You can blame a lot of this on JCAHO, joint commission on accreditation, they tell hospitals how to run their business and if you don’t do what they say then you lose Medicare and if you lose Medicare the rest of the insurances will drop you as well. About 20 or so years ago they decided that pain was the 5th vital sign and that we in medicine was not sufficiently addressing the pain needs of our pts so that guy in bed 7 eating a sandwich and soda with pain 10/10 had to be medicated with pain medicine. They decided that pain was whatever the patient said it was. Then they started penalizing hospitals if pain was addressed. We in medicine play a big role because we allowed this to happen but the origins come from this independent organization that makes its own rules and holds the power to shut down a hospital. What happens in the hospitals trickles out to private practice eventually.


This guy gets it. We as nurses and others in the health care field see it everyday. You people on the outside only see what the news media wants you to see. They show the manufactures as the big ol monsters when in reality the monster is within. The patient wanting to stay drugged when a simple Tylenol will do. The patient will be talking in their cell phone laughing, joking with family, eating, showing no expression of pain... But you let the nurse ask these simple words " Are you in pain, where and what does it rank on a 0-10 level with 10 being the worst" and 9 out of 10 will say it's an 11 or 12. There within lies the opioid crises. We as nurses can not determine a pain level even though it is clearly no more than a 5. JCAHO is a major contributor in this crises.

Cut all opioids out and see what happens.