Major
Nursing
Advisor
Purvis, Jo Ann
Advisor Department
Nursing, College of
Date
5-2020
Keywords
Opioid Epidemic; Pain Management; Nursing; Opioids
Abstract
The opioid epidemic in the United States has been a major concern for the better part of two decades. It began in 1991 when pharmacological companies pushed for an increase in prescribing opioids for pain, claiming that the risk for addiction was very low. With this, we saw an increase in opioid misuse and people selling their prescription opioids to others. It wasn’t until 2010 that efforts to decrease opioid prescribing took place. This decrease in opioid prescribing made it harder for people who were addicted to opioids to obtain them, forcing them to turn to heroin. This cheap and potent opioid increased heroin-related overdoses by 286% from 2002 to 2013, with 80% of heroin users claiming their addiction started with prescription opioids (Liu,2019). In 2013, a synthetic opioid called fentanyl was brought to the illegal drug market. This drug is 50 to 100 times more potent than morphine, leading to even more overdoses and deaths related to opioids.
Since then, there has been various efforts to reduce the risk of opioids while still maximizing its benefits for the use of treating severe pain. This has proven to be a very tricky balance. The use of opioids is extremely effective in treating pain and can decrease a patient’s recovery time, leading to a better quality of life. In fact, poorly controlled acute postoperative pain is associated with increased morbidity, functional and quality-of-life impairment, delayed recovery time, prolonged duration of opioid use, and higher health-care costs (Gan, 2017). Yet how do we effectively treat pain in patients while decreasing the likelihood of opioid addiction?
Throughout this research paper we tackle this question by performing a meta-analysis of different academic articles. This paper will also consider how this epidemic has affected pain management in patients, the opioid epidemic itself, its impacts on families, and how patients become addicted. Finally, this paper hopes to achieve a way to effectively use opioids in the treatment of pain, looking into the latest research and technology and their value in battling the opioid epidemic.