The opioid epidemic has been a growing issue in America, referring to the increased use and dependence of opioid prescriptions. Opioids are strong pain-killers and in recent years, they have been abused for recreational use. In Molly Jeffery’s research, “Opioid Prescribing for Opioid-Naive Patients in Emergency Departments and Other Settings: Characteristics of Prescriptions and Association with Long-Term Use,” it compares opioid prescriptions in the Emergency Department to other clinical settings to see which patients are more likely to become long term users. The objective of this research was to observe the relationship between opioid prescriptions in the Emergency Department and their risk of current use, which can be used as a precaution …show more content…
The research counterbalanced one another, as ED visits are usually one-time visits where patient are given temporary relief until patients follow-up with their primary care physician or a pain specialist. While other settings, there is more of an established relationship with patients and physicians can monitor pain and prescriptions more carefully. Also, emergency department visits tend to be for acute pain while other clinical settings usually deal with chronic pain. Thus, this leads to non-ED clinical settings to exceed CDC guidelines. Also, research shows that disabled Medicare users are more likely to fill their opioid prescription again. This makes sense as those are patients who have long-term illnesses or renal failure, need pain medication more often than those with acute pain. For instance, a wisdom tooth removal does not require repetitive refills for painkillers as the pain will go away after a few weeks, while those with chronic back pain may need repetitive opioid …show more content…
Acute pain would involve newly diagnosed patients who have not returned for a recurrent pain symptom or have endured this pain for six or more months. Patients can be split into two groups, one group with prescriptions for 3 days or less and another group that have a prescription for 3-7 days. We can compare the two patient groups and observe how opioid dependency can be affected by the number of days on pain killers. Also, with just looking at acute pain, groups that endure chronic pain such as those in the disabled Medicare groups will not be included as they are more likely to have opioid dependency for their pain and most likely have prescriptions from outside the ED. This also allows more focus on whether a one time opioid prescription will lead to long-term use since it is acute pain, which lasts for no more than a few