The common perception is that residents will pick up pain management experience on the job. But with the increasing trend to treat cancer and other diseases on an outpatient basis, there isn't much hands-on training offered these days. In addition, some patients refuse to reveal worsening pain, frightened that it means the disease is progressing. Those who do inform their doctors often find an unwillingness to prescribe stronger pain relief. Attitude is a large part of mismanaged pain, says Dr. Joseph Meerschaert, a physical medicine rehabilitation specialist and board-certified pain specialist at William Beaumont Hospital in Troy.
Medication is all too often confused with drug addiction and narcotics.
People don't seem to understand that this is a pill for pain, not for a high. There is a misconception that taking morphine or other narcotics indicates a weak, addicted and demanding patient. They say they don't want to be addicted. They don't understand that they have the receptors that need to be blocked. There is a place for that drug to go and a purpose for it to be in their bodies.