Departmental Papers (Psychology)
Document Type
Journal Article
Date of this Version
5-2016
Publication Source
Journal of Graduate Medical Education
Volume
8
Issue
2
Start Page
138
Last Page
141
DOI
10.4300/JGME-D-15-00186.1
Abstract
Pain represents the chief complaint for nearly half of all emergency department (ED) and outpatient clinic visits in the United States, and as much as it pains the first author to admit it (being a resident physician himself), residents are the frontline clinicians who encounter these patients. Despite available resources, residents often are ill-prepared to manage these patients, particularly in regard to the use of opioid analgesics. Compared to other providers, residents are more likely to overtreat abusers of opioid analgesics and refill opioid prescriptions more quickly. The reasons for this behavior deserve further scrutiny. In this Perspectives article, we ask why residents may be more likely to prescribe opioids for pain, and we provide recommendations for educational interventions to address this.
Copyright/Permission Statement
Published with the permission of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.
Recommended Citation
Siegler, J. E., Kable, J. W., & Chatterjee, A. (2016). Resident Decision Making: Opioids in the Outpatient Setting. Journal of Graduate Medical Education, 8 (2), 138-141. http://dx.doi.org/10.4300/JGME-D-15-00186.1
Date Posted: 08 December 2017
This document has been peer reviewed.