Hospitalist “education” may have driven excessive narcotic use

Here are a couple of articles in Today’s Hospitalist from years ago. [1] [2]

These articles in effect said that pain was a vital sign, patients’ statements about pain should be taken at face value without too much analysis and that hospitalists’ concerns about the risks of narcotics were overblown.

I remember choking and gagging in response to the attempts to shove pain management pseudoscience down my throat at one of our national hospitalist meetings back in the early days. I wish I had kept the notes, but I didn’t.