Drug seekers

[russianbear]

I'm sure this has been posted before and I would appreciate any links to good threads on the topic. I am a new nurse and struggle with giving strong opiates like Dilaudid, etc to people who are clearly pain seeking. I feel dirty. Yesterday I had a gentleman who was ordered 1mg Q6. He was a clock watcher. As soon as that six hours was up, he was on the light. The reason he was getting this is because during the previous shift he threw such a fit yelling, screaming etc to have it the physician ordered it. Looking through his history, this is his pattern. Usually in the ER he yells and screams and demands IV Dilaudid. In this country there are a lot of people addicted to opiates because they are often over prescribed and these types of things feeds into that. As a nurse, one of our responsibilities is to encourage health and I feel more like I am contributing to a societal problem than helping a patient in situations such as this.

I don't want this to be a "pain is what the patient says it is" argument. I am talking about the rare instances where someone is clearly a drug-seeker.

[ixchel]

This thread has become annoying...

Ironically, until you bumped it, it died about 2 weeks ago.

[canigraduate]

Ironically, until you bumped it, it died about 2 weeks ago.

LOL! My first thought when I saw that post was, "Then why did you revive it?"