Who's To Blame For Prescription Drug Abuse

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Kayla Tille Robertson ENG 105 FD-25 28 November 2012 Who is to Blame for Prescription Drug Abuse? There has been a rise in deaths due to prescription drug abuse over the past few years. It has always been a problem, but lately there has been a rise. In some cases, the people who have overdosed are prescribed medicine from the same doctors. Because of some of the patients being linked to one another through the same doctor, the question has arisen; who is responsible for these deaths? Even in our own state, the deaths are at an all-time high. According to Jens Manuel Krogstad, sixty-two Iowans died last year from overdoses of prescription pain relievers like oxycodone, hydrocodone and methadone, the report said. That’s an increase…show more content…
Emily said that over the past twenty years she has learned that physicians often overprescribe their patients for complaints of anxiety, stress, sadness, insomnia, and even everyday pain. They will prescribe too many pills per prescription and even too many refills. Another huge problem that we run into with prescription drug abuse is that the doctors don’t often look at what other doctors have prescribed to someone they are treating. Some guy could go to one doctor one week and get a bottle of Xanax, and go to a different doctor 3 days later and do the same thing because doctors often don’t get into things like that; they just trust that their patient will tell them. Well, if a person has an addiction problem, they are going to do everything they can to get what they want to…show more content…
She prescribes small amounts of certain medications that she knows may be a problem, and she never allows automatic refills. If she runs into a concern about potential abuse, she says no more and she means it, and her patients understand that. She insists on random urine drug test if she isn’t sure if the patient may be self-medicating or possibly diverting the drugs that she supplies them with. Another good thing to do is to check the pharmacy to make certain that the physician is the only prescriber for that patient, and check for emergency room visits for recent drug-seeking exams. Emily says, “No prescriber wants to get that call that the medications they prescribed in good faith, in a spirit of healing and compassion, caused an overdose death. We can do better, and before the next celebrity’s name hits the headlines, we must do

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