Pain Control in the ED

Specialties Pain

Published

As a student nurse I am trying the best identify how to deal with pain management and patients seeking pain medication within the emergency department. How best can you deal with re-occurring pain as some would call "seekers".

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Specializes in Critical Care, ED, Cath lab, CTPAC,Trauma.

This is an age old problem. It varies from facility to facility and state to state. Some doc's cave others refuse to cave in to the patients demands.

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Specializes in NICU, PICU, Transport, L&D, Hospice.
This is an age old problem. It varies from facility to facility and state to state. Some doc's cave others refuse to cave in to the patients demands.

From another perspective. some docs accept a patient's report of pain and treat it accordingly and some docs disregard patient reports of pain and do not treat.

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Specializes in Quality, Cardiac Stepdown, MICU.

Another side to this: floor nursing vs the ED's treatment of pain. Downstairs they tend to throw the kitchen sink at someone in pain who's being admitted, sometimes without a lot of regard for actual diagnosis and upcoming plan of care when they are transferred. "But they gave me 2 of Dilaudid downstairs for my chest pain!" "Yes ma'am, I can see from the charting that they did, but up here on the chest pain floor we treat pain with nitroglycerin and 2 mg morphine. No more Dilaudid for you." Notwithstanding, if you have chest pain that needs Dilaudid and isn't relieved by NTG, you probably have several broken ribs and not an acute MI.

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