Many physicians said they were particularly concerned about potential addiction amid the country’s current opioid crisis. Of the 52,000 Americans who died of drug overdose in 2015, 63.1 percent involved a prescription or illicit opioid, according to the CDC.
“The patient’s potential to become addicted always factors heavily in my treatment of their pain,” a family physician responded in the survey.
However, if a patient is terminally ill, physicians were more comfortable prescribing pain medications, according to the survey. More than three-quarters of respondents (76 percent) said they would not undertreat a terminally ill patient’s pain, even if they had concerns about regulations or addiction.
“A terminally ill patient’s pain should be treated adequately — PERIOD. There is no excuse for not sufficiently treating a terminally ill patient’s pain,” an internist responded in the survey.
Responses are from the “Medscape Ethics Report 2016: Life, Death and Pain.” Medscape conducted an online survey with more than 7,500 physicians across 25 specialties. See the full survey results here.
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