Black patients may receive inadequate pain management from white doctors

Prejudice persists in modern medicine, influences patient treatment.

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[Veritas super omens]

ConLawHero[/url]":1s33xixl]Talk to actual physicians and realize the vast an overwhelming majority don't care who you are, what color you are, what sex you are, or literally anything else [I mean, they will care about relevant physical traits, i.e., if you're a man, no cervical cancer, if you're black then sickle cell, that kind of thing]. Physicians in hospitals are so incredibly overworked that their main goal is to solve one patient's problem then move on to the next.

Moreover, many, many physicians are beginning to hold back on prescribing pain killers because they are over-prescribed right now. When you combine that with iSTOP laws (in NY, but apparently may become nationwide very soon), you have patients complaining that doctors won't prescribe drugs when a) the patient has already gone to 5 different doctors to try to get a script and/or b) the doctor does not feel an opiate is the appropriate treatment.

When my wife does prescribe opiates, is because it's the best course of treatment; not because it's the best course of treatment for white people or black people.

Many patients do not need opiates, and long term use of opiates should be avoided in favor of anti-depressants (which have analgesic properties) or something like tramadol or gabapentin.

The big offenders of over prescribing opiates, primary care physicians. Doctors in hospitals try to avoid prescribing opiates when there are better alternatives. Medical resident scripts for controlled substances are reviewed by attendings and medical students can't prescribe.

Just to avoid any mistaken impressions by the readers: Tramadol is an opioid. Its a mu-receptor agonist and thus fits the same receptors in the pain centers as morphine et al. It does not have the intrinsic activity level though and so is only effective for pain to a certain level. It is also an SRNI (serotonin norepinephrine reuptake inhibitor) which makes it especially useful for chronic pain as it has antidepressant activity.