Community Checkup

Yet another racial gap…

A recent study in The Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) points out a gap in the prescription of pain killers during emergency room visits. The study looked at national data on the prescription of opioid pain meds (e. g. morphine & oxycodone) for whites, blacks, Asians, and Latinos between 1993 and 2005. They found that although prescriptions of pain killers increased during that time, the ethnic gap has remained pretty stable.

The biggest gap was between blacks and whites. The findings showed that 31% of whites with pain were prescribed pain killers compared to 23% of blacks with pain. The study can’t speak to why this is the case. It could be because blacks are less likely to make a big deal out of pain or that they demand pain treatment less than whites. But many speculate, as do I, that it is at least in part, due to doctors having greater suspicion about some blacks being drug users and lying about pain in order to score narcotics.

The bottom line for me, though, comes down to what this doc said:

“It’s time to move past describing disparities and work on narrowing them,” said Dr. Thomas L. Fisher, an emergency room doctor at the University of Chicago Medical Center who was not involved in the study.

Fisher, who is black, said he is not immune to letting subconscious assumptions inappropriately influence his work as a doctor.

“If anybody argues they have no social biases that sway clinical practice, they have not been thoughtful about the issue or they’re not being honest with themselves,” he said. [Source: MSN]