Informative Essay: Pain Medication Drug Abuse

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Pain Medication Drug Abuse Americans are obsessed with popping pills. Our culture believes that a pill will cure anything from the common cold to cancer. Big pharmaceuticals have spent billions of dollars developing and marketing drugs to the young and old. While drugs are beneficial in many ways, there are some major disadvantages to being a society so heavily dependent on drugs. One of those disadvantages is unintentional drug abuse. Many times a doctor will prescribe a drug for pain and the patient becomes addicted to that pain medication, both physically and mentally. They enjoy the pain management side of the drug; however, they get pleasure from the way the drug makes them feel mentally. Drug abuse also occurs as a result of unused drugs left in medicine cabinets. Family members with access to these drugs, especially teens, start taking the prescription medication to get “high.” This access often results in drug addiction due to the feeling the drug gives them while taking the medication. In an effort to reduce the number of people abusing prescription drugs; doctors and communities are learning how to recognize patterns of abusers, monitoring those on prescription pain medication, and looking for ways to provide pain-relief and healing through alternative methods. When an individual is injured, they are looking for quick relief from their pain. …show more content…
Usually this results in a trip to the doctor’s office to get a prescription that will kill the pain. If the pain persists, the patient will seek a refill of the pain medication in order to keep the pain under control. Generally speaking, one or two prescriptions of pain killers will give the body a chance to heal in the area that is causing the pain. However, some people get use to the way the drug makes them feel resulting in a desire for more pain pills. The difficulty for health care providers is determining whether or not the patient is still in pain or simply attempting to get more drugs. Many health care professionals believe nurses are in a good position to find out if the patient is abusing the medication. In 2014, Medburg Nursing produced an article written my Registered Nurse Rhea Faye D. Felicilda-Reynaldo stating, “nurses are in a strategic position to help address substance abuse problems in patients. Substance abuse screening and assessment programs should be integrated into routine nursing care” (Felicilda, 2014, page 394 , para4). Often times, nurses begin the process of treatment in a doctors office; thus allowing for the opportunity to screen the patient by asking simple and general questions regarding their condition and need for additional pain meds. Answers to these question enables health care providers to categorize whether or not the patient is a high risk for drug abuse. In addition, the nurse is able to observe behaviors of the patient during the question process. If the patient is hostile, aggressive, or demanding, this can lead to suspicion that the patient is abusing the drug desired. Monitoring patients who are using pain medication is a another method being explored reducing the number of people abusing drugs. West Virginia, Ohio, and Kentucky have the highest number of people abusing prescription drugs. Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) has been implemented in these states in an effort to shrink the number of people addicted to these medications. The program includes prescriber regulation, compliance obligations and substance regulation. Authors White and Thomas-Bush stated, “Each state, West Virginia, Ohio and Kentucky, requires concurrent controlled substance reporting within one (1) day of dispensing any controlled substance within the regulated categories” (White, 2016, Page 93, Para 3). Regulating the highly addictive drugs and their dispensing is a first step in reducing the abuse in these states. If these programs work, other states will follow the program if the number of prescription drug abuse, nationwide, continues to grow. Alternative methods to pain management are becoming increasingly popular among physicians. The need to provide pain relief without highly addictive drugs like Oxycodone has become a priority for many doctors whose patients suffer from chronic pain. Pain relief methods like meditation, hypnosis, relaxation, acupuncture, chiropractic, physical therapy and behavior modification are becoming the preferred treatment over pain medications. Due to the reasoning that “drugs essentially make changes in the endogenous

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