Treating Pain: Advancements and Caveats
Pain is subjective, and this fact can make management extremely difficult. Even though medical treatments continue to advance, the access to new and better methods remains widely unavailable for many. When one worker can rate the pain of a paper cut at a 10 and the other at a 1, you know that doctors have their work cut out for them in terms of treating people with major injuries. We'll look at how it all functions in the real world.
Prescription Management, or Lack Thereof
When a doctor gives an employee a treatment plan, they do so for several reasons. They obviously want the best possible recovery time for the patient but they also do it cover themselves. They can't make a patient complete the plan, and often don't understand what it will really mean for a patient to attempt to complete it. At a recent Workers Compensation conference, experts let the group know that up to 30% of prescription are never actually filled, and up to half aren't taken as directed. If the worker has other pre-existing conditions, they may be aggravated by a workplace injury, making one small incident have lasting repercussions.
Too Much, Too Fast
Depending on the type of care a worker receives, they may end up being prescribed multiple medications that only end up confusing the worker and potentially creating adverse reactions to a combination of medications. Also certain medications can cause muscle pain that has nothing to do with the original injury. Workers who see multiple doctors (as can be common in workers compensation) have the highest risk of this occurring. Injured parties may forget or be unaware that they have common medical problems, such as high blood pressure. The wrong medications after an injury may cause a life-threatening condition.
What to Remember
Even if you're not a doctor, it's important to encourage the employee to do the right thing. Claiming ignorance may only go so far if the worker develops a more serious condition after a minor industry. Just one fallen box can result in a lifetime of chronic back pain for the worker, but proper initial care may be the answer to this. Doctors need to pay closer attention to how pain is improving, and what the effect of that pain has on the employee in terms of physical and emotional symptoms. The best thing to do in the case of an injury is to remember that your fate is tied with the fate of the worker. The better care the worker gets, the more likely it is you will have the best outcome. By understanding how pain is treated and the potential problems of the current strategies, you have the opportunity to lessen the severity of the final claim.