What about when pain is an aid in the diagnoses?
What about when pain is an aid in the diagnoses?
I was always told that it was unwise to give pain managment to undiagnosed abdominal pain.
plus there has been at least of bit of published research that showed no difference in diagnostic accuracy.
Its an old, persistent wife's tale that comes from the early days of surgery (Halstead maybe?). The prevailing opinion was that the "trained hands of a surgeon" must assess an abdomen before opiates were administered. Undifferentiated abdominal pain is probably going to get scanned anyway now a days, plus there has been at least of bit of published research that showed no difference in diagnostic accuracy.
People here know I'm an advocate of analgesia. I'm basically akin to Aidey in how I do it.
I guess in part this is due to the fact that 90% of our assignments are wellfare patient based people who depend on EMS to carry their lives. Kind of kills a lot of morale of people wanting to really help them.
Exactly the way I approach pain management. The problem with "John Snow" is it can slow down care, not because of problems with diagnostics, simply because it's a bit difficult to obtain a history when the patient is drooling on their shirt...With that, I'll ask what is a tolerable level of pain for them, and that's the point I shoot for.