Study Showing Differences In Access To Pain Treatment Illustrates Overall Issue Of Health Disparities, Opinion Piece Says

Main Category: Pain / Anesthetics
Article Date: 30 Jan 2008 - 10:00 PDT

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A recent Journal of the American Medical Association study that found minorities are less likely than whites to receive narcotic painkillers at emergency departments "underscores the deeply entrenched problem of racial and ethnic health care disparities in American medicine," Kate Scannell, a physician and syndicated columnist, writes in the Freemont Argus.

Scannell notes that disparities in pain treatment have been known for years, and the JAMA study "shows how recalcitrant they've remained despite sizable public and professional campaigns to address and redress them." She adds that part of the problem is that "there is no reliable yardstick by which to measure someone else's pain or to calculate its perfect remedy." According to Scannell, "Disparities in pain assessment and treatment aren't justified by any good measure of medical technology. Rather, these disparities are humanly created and socially constructed." Pain relief "can be further compromised when patients lack insurance, health care finances, and the means and opportunity to obtain a medical provider," Scannell writes.

She adds, "The disregard and undertreatment of someone's pain is a poor medical practice that harms patients in various ways. It is dehumanizing in that it dismisses the subjective suffering of another person." Scannell states, "Clearly, we all have much work to do to make health care delivery a more just and humane system for minority patients" (Scannell, Freemont Argus, 1/27).

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