Legacy patients are so-called because their opioid use behaviors express past, aggressive opioid prescribing by a clinician. Managing their pain and dependence justly is ethically complex.
AMA J Ethics. 2020;22(8):E651-657. doi:
10.1001/amajethics.2020.651.
Having implied that a particular clinical decision had been made to “free up a hospital bed,” the attending physician walked away without further comments to the residents or talking with the patient.
Jack M. Berger, MS, MD, PhD and Nalini Vadivelu, MD
Guidelines for the use of controlled substances for the treatment of pain now consider inappropriate treatment, including undertreatment of pain, a departure from an acceptable standard of practice.
A digital record of place history and environmental context can provide a piece of clinically relevant information to help physicians understand what toxins patients may have been exposed to.