Changing the way pain is perceived

Late last year, a news analysis piece on the opioid crisis was published. This article examined the over-prescription and overuse of opioids (Mendes, 2019). However, the reasons behind this rise in the use of opioids stem from the pain that many people are living with day in, day out, which is ‘often difficult to treat and can be associated with many different types of tissue injuries and disease processes’ (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), 2017).

Identifying the root cause of this problem requires coming face-to-face with a hard truth: an entire culture has been created, perhaps inadvertently, by healthcare organisations, whom we look to for guidance, together with pharmaceutical companies. These have done tremendous work in research and development, but also have interests to serve that extend beyond patients, and health and medical professionals, most of whom are doing their best to help patients with the best knowledge they feel is currently available.