-Caveat Lector-
HEALTHBEAT: Hospitals told to treat patients' pain
By LAURAN NEERGAARD
The Associated Press
12/26/00 12:48 AM
WASHINGTON (AP) -- When you enter a hospital, you have a right to have your
pain properly treated.
That sounds so common-sense, yet millions of Americans suffer every day
because pain is routinely ignored or undertreated.
But starting next week, the nation's hospitals must make a major change: New
standards require that every patient's pain be measured regularly from the
time they check in -- just like other vital signs are measured -- and proper
pain relief begun or the hospitals risk losing their accreditation.
Patients should expect at least to be asked to rate how they're feeling,
from zero, no pain, to 10, the worst pain imaginable. (Small children will
use pictures to rate pain.) The score determines what steps the hospital
must take to help.
To stress how important the changes are, the new standards actually put in
writing that "patients have the right" to proper pain assessment and
treatment.
Some hospitals already are handing out leaflets and posting signs in the
halls telling patients about that right, so they know it's OK -- nay,
crucial -- to complain if a doctor or nurse doesn't help.
Better, it's not just hospitals that must take the new steps but nursing
homes and outpatient clinics accredited by the Joint Commission on
Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations. The commission adopted the
standards over a year ago, but gave facilities until January to comply.
It's "a watershed event," said Dr. Russell Portenoy, pain medicine chairman
of New York's Beth Israel Medical Center. "No one has ever promised patients
no pain. But what JCAHO wants to do is promise people their pain will be
assessed and managed in a state-of-the-art way."
Many centers still are scrambling to comply. Teaching health workers who
aren't pain specialists how to treat can take some time -- and many doctors
inappropriately shun narcotics, a treatment mainstay for numerous types of
pain, because they think patients will get hooked on them.
"This is not going to happen overnight," cautioned American Pain Society
president-elect Christine Miaskowski, nursing chair at the University of
California, San Francisco.
"Patients are going to have to demand better care," she said. "Unrelieved
pain has negative effects. Just like they need an antibiotic to treat
infection, they need analgesics to treat their pain."
But many patients don't know they don't have to suffer -- or that pain is
more than bothersome, it actually hinders healing.
So being a stoic isn't good. Revealing how much pain you're in doesn't
"bother the doctors" or distract them from treating your underlying disease,
common excuses.
"People think it's like an 11th commandment: 'Thou had surgery, thou should
have pain.' ... Or that if you have cancer, you must have pain," said June
Dahl, a University of Wisconsin pain specialist who helped write the
standards. "Pain can be relieved."
How big is the problem? Cancer provides the best estimates: About 40 percent
of cancer patients have undertreated pain. One in four elderly cancer
patients in nursing homes receives no treatment at all for daily pain. Last
year, Oregon's medical board disciplined a doctor for treating a dying
cancer patient's pain with mere Tylenol.
Look beyond hospitals and some 9 percent of Americans suffer chronic pain,
ranging from back injuries to rheumatoid arthritis. Experts say four of
every 10 with moderate to severe pain don't get adequate relief.
One of the biggest challenges is teaching nonspecialists that narcotic
painkillers called opioids -- such as morphine, codeine, fentanyl -- are the
mainstay for many types of pain, Portenoy says.
Many doctors hesitate to prescribe opioids, which are heavily regulated
because they can be abused by addicts. But for people who have never abused
drugs and have no history of psychological problems, hardly any become
dependent on pain medicine, Miaskowski said.
Another complaint, heavy sedation, usually wanes in three to four days, she
said.
So what's state-of-the-art treatment? For moderate to severe pain from acute
illness or surgery, expect a short-acting opioid like Percocet, or morphine
in a patient-controlled quick-dose pump. For cancer, expect a long-acting
version of morphine or oxycodone, or a fentanyl skin patch.
For chronic pain not due to cancer, new guidelines recommend similar
opioids.
Methadone is an alternative when those drugs fail.
Doctors also are trying antidepressants and antiseizure drugs like
gabapentin for patients with nerve-related pain.
And relaxation and hypnosis help, too -- but shouldn't replace proper
medication, Miaskowski stresses.
------
EDITOR'S NOTE -- Lauran Neergaard covers health and medical issues for The
Associated Press in Washington.
--------
On the Net:
American Pain Society: http://www.ampainsoc.org
Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations:
http://www.jcaho.org
Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not
be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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