Quote:
Originally Posted by kyuuei
Its annoying, and frustrating, but necessary. There's no real graceful way of saying "Well some of you bitches lie so we gotta test all of ya'll!" (well maybe slightly more graceful than that..)
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This is a really tough point to deal with... in my experience the vast majority of patients don't lie, but a few do and this makes it hard for doctors to know when to take what they're hearing at face value.
I've seen some doctors resolve this for themselves by taking the (extremely misguided) view that all patients are lying... I've heard residents I work with call patients drugs seekers who were definitely NOT drug seekers and were truly in a lot of pain.
On the other hand, I also once had a patient tell me he had "10 of out 10" pain in his "brain and eyelids" as he was lying comfortably on his hospital bed and tell me the only thing that relieved his pain was morphine. A urine tox screen then showed he was in opioid withdrawal. I even heard a story of a patient who went as far as to pretend to be unconscious and let himself be intubated (!!) in order to get drugs... when he overheard the doctor say "oh I know this guy, he's a drug seeker, we're not giving him anything" he sat up pulled out the tube (to the astonishment of everyone else who thought he was on the verge of death), and huffed out of the hospital.
So yeah, most patients don't lie, but the ones who do make it really tough for everyone else to have a trusting relationship with their doctor.