Opioids In Nursing Essay

In nursing school one of the most basic skills we get taught is taking patient’s vital signs: blood pressure, pulse, temperature and respirations. These are objective, they can be seen and quantified in some way. However, now a days, the “fifth vital sign” is pain. But how can pain levels be considered a vital sign when pain is a relative and subjective term? We are taught that we must trust what our patient is telling us, and we can’t say otherwise. A patient who rates their pain as a “10” for an ingrown nail versus another patient with a broken leg who also says the pain is a “10”, Is someone telling the truth? Are both telling the truth? Or is someone looking to get high? In reality it’s both, but in the back of the nurses mind there’s always that question. Are you truly in pain or do you have an addiction?

Opioids or Narcotics work by “attaching to specific proteins called opioid receptors, which are found in the brain, spinal cord, and gastrointestinal tract. When these drugs attach to certain opioid receptors, they can block the transmission of pain messages to the brain.” (Opioids, 2016) Chronic exposure to opioids reduces attention and affects structural and functional parts of the brain like those in charge of impulse, motivation and motor ability. By making pain the “fifth

The company funded agencies and organizations that constitute authoritative voices on the “subject of pain management” in the United States. As a result, the American Pain Society introduced a campaign known as “Pain is the fifth vital sign” which recommended the use of opiate sedatives. However, the scientific community has not yet been able to find sufficient evidence on the long-term effects of opioid analgesics on chronic pain. Surveys on patients with chronic pain conditions have revealed that suffering persists despite