Archives for November 2015

Empathy: An Overdue Prescription

Last week I discussed the phenomenon that, though more women experience pain than men, they are chronically undertreated. Ethnic minorities, including African Americans, are known to be undertreated as well. Not surprisingly, low-income patients experience the same disparity.

One could point to subtle gender, class, and racial biases as the reason why such disparities exist. While I would agree that these are problems we ought to address, I think the real culprit is far more subtle and prevalent: physicians just have a low aptitude for empathy.

Women in Pain: What We Need to Know

As I put it in my book The Painful Truth, “Pain is an unbidden guest, humanity’s shadow companion down through the ages. It is an interloper, a despoiler of dreams, a thief.” The “thief,” however, does not treat all persons equally. Chronic pain affects one group of people more frequently than any other—women.

A study published in a 2009 issue of the Journal of Pain found that women are “twice as likely to have multiple sclerosis, two to three times more likely to develop rheumatoid arthritis and four times more likely to have chronic fatigue syndrome than men. As a whole, autoimmune diseases, which often include debilitating pain, strike women three times more frequently than men.”

What’s Massachusetts Thinking?

What’s Massachusetts thinking?

The newest twist in the painkiller abuse debate is that Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker has proposed legislation that has me in dejected disbelief. The bill would restrict both doctors and dentists from prescribing more than 72 hours of medication to patients upon initial injury or surgery. I understand the thought but it is wrongheaded.

In proposing the legislation, the Governor is reacting to the more than 1,000 painkiller overdose deaths in the state in 2014 and something clearly needs to be done. I get it. But the legislation is an over-reaction and will likely cause unnecessary pain and suffering. Sadly the legislation accelerates the trend of politicians and regulators practicing medicine.