Quality Pain Care for Older Adults in an Era of Suspicion and Scrutiny.

Abstract

In two decades, the pendulum has swung from focusing on the undertreatment of pain by prescribers who fail to use medically necessary opioid agents to an intense focus on overprescribing opioid medications and the harms they cause. Within these two extremes rests the older adult with pain and in need of safe and effective care. Today, health care providers are practicing in an era of scrutiny, with new guidelines and regulations superseding their compassion and clinical judgment about the best treatment options when older adults have pain across the care continuum. Media depicting opioid medications as lethal, unnecessary, and highly addictive that do not distinguish non-medical from therapeutic use or legitimately versus illegally obtained drugs are widely reported. These reports and legislative focus on treating addiction have silenced and further stigmatized older adults with persistent pain. Patients and professionals treating pain need to provide balance of multimodal pain management strategies to safely manage persistent pain based on a comprehensive assessment and personalized approach. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 42(12), 31-39.].