Another article on denying post-surgical opiates after C-sections…

And I can’t help thinking about Fanny Burney, who had a mastectomy in 1811, before anesthesia.

And she had better post-surgical pain control than women do in 2021, because she had laudanum.
So… we know that *how* a medical provider asks a question influences how a patient responds. If you ask with a negative, like, “you don’t want [n], do you?” the patient is far more likely to agree, even if they feel they need [n], because there’s a power imbalance in play.
And I read these studies, and they don’t publish the script they’re using (if there is one), but if an institution pushes the idea that [n] is bad, their staff will follow that guidance, and will show disapproval to patients who self-advocate against that guidance.
I have a feeling it’s a Reid Technique problem — if you ask leading questions, you get the answers you led the subject to report.

We know it’s a problem in psych (which is why we’re careful with leading questions & in the courtroom… but it hasn’t filtered down to providers.
I don’t know how to fix it, because doctors & hospitals are working off terrible guidance from CDC/DEA, which relied on bad statistics (which the CDC has *admitted*) and providers have come to see opiates as a moral issue, not a biological one.

Nobody’s listening to patients.
And I get the fallout, because I get the resulting PTSD.

(What’s infuriating me right now is these papers all say “uncontrolled pain is implicated in post-partum depression and post-partum psychosis” and we tell them they’re causing medical PTSD… but dots! Not connected!)
Here’s me plugging Dr Carl L Hart’s book again: Drug Use For Grown-Ups.
It’s infuriating in places, but it’s also powered by better research (both formal and personal).
You can follow @CZEdwards.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: