Abstract
Objectives. Recognize the roles of addiction medicine professionals regarding supply reduction. Handle patients with prescriptions that seems dubious or fraudulent. Feel comfortable navigating a patient dynamic when the patient is lying. The oral presentation will be focused around a challenging clinical vignette that presents a variety of potential choices, each with specific ethical consequences for the patient and physician. After discussing the vignette, there will be a structured discussion among presentation attendees. The moderator, Dr. Brennan, will use a common discussion technique in ethical discourse called anchoring, whereby the discussion is begun from a rigid viewpoint, and through discourse a consensus is gradually reached. The vignette discussed will be an adult male with a history of severe opioid use disorder who presented to an ER in New York City requesting admission for opioid detoxification and rehabilitation. The patient was very well known to the physician, having completed a 4 week inpatient stay for opioid use disorder several weeks prior to seeking readmission. In the interval weeks since discharge the patient had relapsed on opioids by finding several physicians in New York City to write him prescriptions for his drug of choice. Upon readmission to the inpatient unit his belongings were searched and recorded, and one of his prescriptions for opioids was mistakenly placed in his chart, rather than in his locker with the rest of his supplies. The physician happened to find this prescription and suspects that it was written at a pill mill, or perhaps written by a physician who didn't know that the patient had an addiction to opioids. Should the prescription, which represented the very crux of this patient's problem, be returned to the patient since it is their legal property? Or should the physician throw it away? What role should addiction medicine physicians have in patrolling other physicians with dubious prescribing habits?
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call