Are Emergency Physicians Too Stingy With Analgesics?

Physician Pain Reminder as an Intervention to Enhance Analgesia for Extremity and Clavicle Injuries in Pediatric Emergency

“…2,23,29 Emergency physicians often fail to recognize pain and fall short of treating painful conditions appropriately. 8,17,29 Limb and clavicle injuries are among the most painful pediatric emergencies, 15 and inadequate pain management leads to unnecessary suffering. Prompt assessment and effective management not only reduce patient distress and improve quality of care, but they also increase pediatric ED satisfaction.…”

Ongoing visual analog score display improves Emergency Department pain care

“…Studies have found that though some patients are at particular risk for inadequate pain relief, the problem of insufficient analgesia is present in myriad geographical settings, hospital departments, patient demographics, and diagnostic categories (22)(23)(24)(25)(26). The reasons for inappropriate withholding of pain medication are manifold, but common sense supports a contention that ED pain relief shortcomings are infrequently due to presence of analgesia contraindications.…”

Postoperative Pain and Other Acute Pain Syndromes

“…405,406 Numerous reports point to the inadequacy of pain management in trauma patients, particularly during the evaluation and resuscitation phases of care (Table 18.8). [407][408][409][410][411][412] Undertreatment of acute pain in trauma patients may have many causes, including lack of proper pain assessment, especially if the patient cannot report the pain; late or improper administration of analgesics; concerns about hemodynamics; fear that analgesia may interfere with the accurate diagnosis of injuries; the misconception that sleep automatically indicates the absence of pain; unfounded concerns that opioid use in the management of acute pain leads to addiction; and beliefs that trauma patients do not remember painful events. 409,413,414 Evidence indicates that untreated pain in trauma and critically ill patients has a negative impact on the physiologic stress response to injury and can contribute to the incidence of complications such as pulmonary dysfunction, thromboembolic phenomena, myocardial infarction, decreased immune function, and immobility.…”