Table of ContentsOverprescriptionToo Many Medical School RankingsMedical School CirriculaSummary of Works CitedChristopher was an excellent student and star athlete. One day he was in a car accident, which caused him mild back pain that remained after the car accident. Due to this back pain, he was prescribed opioids to relieve the pain. Christopher began to like the way he felt after taking the medicine, and so he naturally looked for another doctor who would be willing to write him a prescription for a larger quantity. It went from one tablet a day to twenty-five. With the abuse of medications, Christopher's attitude towards everything changed. He fought with the people he loved, he couldn't sleep at night, and he rarely came home for the night. After being admitted to several rehab centers and kicked out due to his bad behavior, his addiction only got worse. Two years after his accident, he died. He was only twenty-two years old and it all started with mild back pain. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Today, there have been an increasing number of deaths due to the large number of opioids available in today's society. Opioids are a form of painkiller that can produce euphoria, which is a feeling of happiness or pleasure that leaves the person in a more relaxed state. With the feeling of this euphoria mixed with pain, patients can very easily abuse this medication because they enjoy the feeling that results from the medication. A person may take the prescribed medication in a way they are not supposed to, such as through a needle, or they may take more medication in one sitting than they are supposed to. The real danger of this medication is that even if taken correctly, it can be addictive. When a person relies on a medication and then overuses it, it can lead to worse events, such as addiction, overdose, and even death. This problem affects all types of communities across America. No matter race, age, or socioeconomic status: this epidemic is wiping them all out. According to AAMC News, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that an average of ninety-one Americans die every day due to opioid misuse. Whether a patient presents with a torn ACL or with back pain, they are often prescribed some type of pain medication. Although these medications are an essential tool for treating suffering patients, they pose a major risk of abuse. The question that will be addressed in this article is the role that doctors play in fueling the opioid epidemic. Some people will blame the individual patient, while others will blame the medical profession. Here's another shocking statistic from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Between 2000 and 2014, nearly half a million Americans died from drug overdoses. An even more terrifying statistic is that between 1999 and 2017, nearly 400,000 people died specifically from opioid overdose. Due to terrifying statistics, the opioid crisis is crowned as the most extreme public health emergency to date. I chose this topic specifically because I am considering a career in the medical field, as well as because I personally know someone who had a heroin overdose. After a friend of mine overdosed a few years ago, it not only opened my eyes, but the entire city. I don't think that the people who are athigh school or college students are truly aware of how easy it is to become a victim of the opioid epidemic. Because this problem is so complex, it will take a huge dose of creativity to put an end to it. to this. Since currently any doctor can write a prescription for these medications, my plan is to take two steps. This problem is not just a national problem, but a global problem. Dramatic increases have been recorded in Australia, China, Europe and Russia. First, I would require any type of physician to participate in annual recertification to ensure they are up to date on current information about opioids and their effects. Second, I would ensure that only certain specialists can write opioid prescriptions. For example, a neurologist will not be allowed to write this scenario, but a pain specialist will be able to write the scenario if it is current and has been recertified. By doing these two things, I hope there will be fewer of these potentially deadly drugs lying around and there will be fewer deaths. In the 1980s, there was no concern that patients would become addicted. Doctors prescribed these drugs without fear that their patient would eventually become addicted and/or overdose and commit suicide. Russell Portenoy, MD, a neurologist and pain specialist who was also chairman of the department of pain medicine and palliative care at Beth Israel Hospital in New York, said the risk of addiction was so low that if a doctor did not treat his patients' pain, he was considered cruel. This could even be considered medical negligence. Today, when a nurse enters a patient's room, they most often ask the patient's pain level and then report that response to the patient's doctor. Practicing doctors tend to prescribe these potentially deadly drugs to relieve their pain. A doctor, for obvious reasons, doesn't want to see his patients suffer, so he thinks the solution is to give the patient access to narcotics to make the pain go away. Overprescription A significant factor contributing to the opioid epidemic is the fact that these medications are overprescribed. Although this is not the only cause of the problem, it is a huge contributing factor. When patients are prescribed more medications than they actually need, it can lead them to become more dependent on those medications. This addiction can lead to more serious problems, such as overuse, or even death. In the 1990s, pharmaceutical companies were convinced that opioids were not addictive and that there was no chance of patients becoming addicted. They were obviously wrong. That being said and knowing this, doctors saw no problem in prescribing these medications in addition to giving a small extra, so their patients had the supply if they needed it. The doctors' goal, for obvious reasons, was to make sure their patients were happy and pain-free. The patients themselves are very intelligent and know how to acquire more medicine than they were initially given. Patients can see multiple doctors for the same problem, and all doctors can write the same scenario. This gives the patient access to more than they need for their diagnosis. Communication is essential. If the entire medical world used the same program to send prescriptions, then they would be on the same page regarding their patients. All patient history regardingfamily history and prescription history would all be in one place. If this happened, then doctors would already see that John Doe was prescribed this medication last week and cannot receive another refill until a later date. Too Many Doctors The fact that these doctors are overprescribing these medications brings me to my next point. the important point is that there are so many extras lying around. Recent studies have shown that of the nine billion Vicodin prescribed last year, an estimated half of these drugs remain unused. With so many leftovers, people are selling them across the country. That being said, pharmacies should have a place where patients can return their unused medications. This solves the problem of extras lying around unused, as well as solving the problem of people overusing the pill. As previously stated, there should be a law that a practicing healthcare professional should only be allowed to write a prescription for an opioid if they obtain a certain specialty. license or if they are not recertified to ensure they are up to date on the medication. For example, a dentist should not be allowed to write them because it is not exactly within their expertise. On the other hand, a pain specialist should be allowed to write these medication scripts since they are specialized in this subject. Anyone currently practicing in the field of pain management, anesthesiology, physical medicine or rehabilitation should be able to write these prescriptions since they are specially trained. If a dentist believes that a pain reliever would benefit the patient, then he or she should consult with a pain management physician to ensure that this is necessary. Medical School Rankings A major issue discovered regarding this outbreak was the individual rankings of medical schools. It has been observed that doctors who studied at higher level medical schools write fewer scripts for opioids. In contrast, doctors who attended lower-ranked medical schools write opioid prescriptions more often. According to an article from the National Bureau of Economic Research, doctors who attended the lowest-ranked U.S. medical schools prescribe nearly three times as many opioids per year as doctors who attended the top-ranked U.S. medical schools. This office also states that for every doctor prescribed like those who studied at top-ranked medical schools, the United States "would have had 56.5 percent fewer opioid prescriptions" and, better yet, "8, 5% fewer deaths” between 2006 and 2006. the year 2014. In 2006, a total of approximately “2.04 million” opioid prescriptions were written. Six years later, in 2012, this figure rose to “2.6 million”. This is an even more alarming statistic; in 2014, on average, a doctor wrote “221.7 opioid prescriptions.” Taking all these statistics into account, there remains only “28.3% of doctors who do not prescribe any opioid prescriptions” in 2014. Medical school curricula The last question I would like to address in this article concerns the curricula of medical schools. medical faculties. In some states, such as Massachusetts, some medical schools do not make it a point in their curricula to teach how to safely prescribe opioids. In fact, in 2016, the White House asked medical schools to commit to implementing new guidance from the Center for Disease Control regarding the specific prescribing of opioids. Keep in mind: this is just a sample.23645