Pain Management

Abstract

Pain is the most common reason people visit emergency departments (EDs). Recent studies have reported that nearly 80% of patients presenting to the ED have complaints of pain, with 40% having some component of an underlying chronic pain syndrome. Further, many of these patients are discharged without receiving any interventions for their symptoms. There is no denying that treating pain is a part of our everyday practice, but despite these statistics, our overall management and understanding of how pain works is extremely limited. Many would agree our standard therapies of acetaminophen, NSAIDS, and opiates remain the mainstay, but other options (particularly interventional/procedural) remain a black box for most emergency providers. The truth is we have only scratched the surface of how pain works and how we can treat it, and new discoveries are being made constantly. Pain management is its own unique specialty with fellowship training available. Traditionally these fellowships were reserved for graduates of Anesthesiology, Physical Medicine & Rehabilitation (PM&R), and Neurology residency training programs (among a few others), but more and more graduates of Emergency Medicine (EM) are being accepted, and for good reason.