F.D.A. Won’t Order Doctors to Get Pain-Drug Training

[Poll_Blind]

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/10/health/fda-rejects-mandatory-training-in-painkillers-for-doctors.html?_r=1&src=recg
[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-bottom: none; border-radius: 0.3846em 0.3846em 0em 0em; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]F.D.A. Won’t Order Doctors to Get Pain-Drug Training[div class="excerpt" style="border: 1px solid #bfbfbf; border-top: none; border-radius: 0em 0em 0.3846em 0.3846em; background-color: #f4f4f4; box-shadow: 2px 2px 6px #bfbfbf;"]The Food and Drug Administration, overriding the advice of an expert panel, said Monday that it would not require doctors to have special training before they could prescribe long-acting narcotic painkillers that can lead to addiction.

But the agency said companies that make the drugs, like OxyContin, fentanyl and methadone, would be required to underwrite the cost of voluntary programs aimed at teaching doctors how to best use them.

The F.D.A. announcement came after several years of deliberations by the agency into the growing problem of prescription painkiller abuse and misuse. In 2010, a panel of outside experts assembled by the F.D.A. overwhelmingly rejected the agency’s proposal that physician training be voluntary.

Instead, that panel said that mandatory training was essential both to reduce the abuse of strong painkillers, or opioids and to make sure that pain patients were treated appropriately with them.

To paraphrase the old Mastercard commercials: "Cost to taxpayers? Priceless."

PB

[mrmpa]

1. I am glad to hear of the FDA's decision..............

I think that any mandatory training would just make physicians leery of prescribing and pain medication(s). It would make patients like myself having to go elsewhere to find what is needed to bring my pain levels down from a morning level of 10 to an afternoon level of 6.

Within the past week, I have seen TV commercials advertising for rehab centers for people addicted to prescribed medications. I know that there are doctors and patients who abuse the system, but what is happening is that those doctors and patients who don't abuse the system would be scared away from using these drugs.

What I personally would give for marijuana to be legal.

[Warpy]

2. That's right.

They've already got most physicians leery of prescribing adequate medication to patients who need it. They don't need to add to this. Untreated pain is fatal--people isolate, get depressed, and commit suicide to end it.

Even with the enormous diversion of Oxycontin in Florida, the problem isn't as severe as moralists would have anyone believe. The problem is that it's black market, not that people are on the stuff. The illegality drives the prices up and that causes street crime.

Where they've managed to clean up the Oxy problem, they've already noticed people just swapping over to cheap heroin, usually black tar. This will undoubtedly contribute to more deaths as quality control doesn't exist in the illegal drug biz.

Personally, I'd love to see the drug war ended and the gangs getting rich off the black market out of business. I don't mind stepping over nodding junkies in doorways, they're peaceful and we'd have a more civil society were they not abused by a bunch of bad laws.

[Comrade Grumpy]

3. The imperatives of pain treatment overrode the imperatives of drug control.

At the same time we have massive pain pill misuse and abuse, we also have a serious problem with the undertreatment of pain. Let's not sacrifice patients on the altar of the drug war.

[mucifer]

4. People with endstage disease with chronic pain who are not in hospice have a really hard time with

the frequent increases in pain meds that are required as their tumors grow and grow. I'm a hospice and palliative care nurse. Some of my patients are on palliative care because they are still getting chemo and or radiation so they don't qualify for hospice but they need frequent increases in narcotics but the state public aid system makes this difficult here in Illinois and I am glad when they are able to transition to hospice. With a verbal order from a doctor, a hospice nurse can call in narcotic changes to our pharmacy and the medications come to the home the same day. When they aren't in hospice, it's often phone calls to Springfield pleading the case for the increase.

[FrodosPet]

5. Bless you and thank you!

>> I'm a hospice and palliative care nurse. <<

That alone makes you an amazing, heroic person.

Please always know that people who have never met you respect and appreciate what you do.