In one of my recent nursing classes, we were having a
discussion about how to care for a patient with cancer. Different interventions
were brought up one of them included giving a patient opioids. For those who
are living underneath a rock, President Trump has recently declared there to be
an opioid crisis. Naturally, one of my classmates asked about opioids and addiction
and what we’re supposed to do about this as nurses.
This is what my professor said. From a nursing standpoint,
addiction is any psychological dependency on substances, like drugs. You cannot
be addicted to medication if you body physically needs it (AKA when you have
cancer and in a lot of pain). However, our bodies build up tolerances to drugs
after use overtime. People often can mix up tolerances with addiction.
But what does that mean? Because of the misconceptions and
taboos regarding addictions (and specifically those with drugs), patients
refuse to take pain killers out of fear they’ll develop an addiction to Tylenol
or opioids. A lot of these patients are 70-80 year old grandmas you'd commonly find at the hospital. Our society’s poor views on addiction have caused people to refuse
a basic right, a right to relieve pain. I think that’s screwed up.
I currently work in a mental health unit at the hospital,
and it reminded me about another time we talked about addiction in class. Last
time, we watched a TED Talk about addiction and community. Here’s a video of it
https://www.ted.com/talks/johann_hari_everything_you_think_you_know_about_addiction_is_wrong
For those who don’t want to watch it. This is the summary:
in America we do addiction care pretty shitty. Other countries for addiction
care highlight the importance of community. Integrating community to addicts
has been tremendously important. I am skeptical on the concept, but I do think
that their take on addiction and therapy is much better here in America. I
think that our mindset on addictions needs to be shifted and change our
perspectives and care.
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