hausla01

With around 8 months experience, I can say that the typical day in outpatient pain management seems to involve around 50% honest people with real pain issues who are not necessarily wanting narcotics nor actively drug seeking. It seems another 25% are solely there for high dose narcotics to abuse or sell and the other 25 % say things that maybe they are using to lean towards narcotic prescriptions, but maybe they are telling the truth ("PT doesn't work, made it worse, etc. I am afraid of needles, injections don't work, etc.) It is part of my job to be suspicious of everyone and to research and look for discrepancies . It is difficult to work with this patient population: Lots of psych issues, lots of unknowns; It's not fun to have to assume the worst from people, but that is how we can look out for patient (and our whole community 's) safety!

Overwhelmed and incompetent sums it up pretty well! I'm headed into week 4, and I feel the same and struggle with being slow and inefficient. I had a mini meltdown last week when my first patient of five was in pain and needed help (to the bathroom, cleaned up, sitz bath, radiation sores addressed, cream applied, new pad- and then she had another BM) I called the NA and asked for help and she didn't understand why I needed her (bc I hadn't passed meds, taken vitals, assessed, etc). That first experience of the morning had me flustered and set me up for mistakes. So my advice to others is to regroup and be flexible. I should have asked my preceptor for more help, but felt that I needed to practice without her help bc I will be alone soon. Yikes! Reading about other's experiences and feelings is invaluable. I would look into doing something to get more sleep if you can. Not being able to sleep is quite a bit of anxiety, there's help if you need it. I feel better just having PRN Xanax available, even though I do not use it often. Good luck to you!