Opioids Don’t Work for Most People with Chronic Pain. So Why Do We Still Prescribe Them?

January 22, 2019

(The Guardian) – One of the key principles you learn in medical school is that doctors should “do no harm”. But what should doctors do when our patients insist that we do things that we know are harmful? This is the dilemma that thousands of doctors face on a daily basis when tasked with helping patients with chronic pain. Pain is a universal human experience that alerts us to bodily harm. Most pain is transient and requires no specific intervention other than the passage of time.