Pain Medicine and Profession

The quality of pain care in the United States has deteriorated over the past decade, to the extent that the state of the science(s) has been described as a ‘crisis.'[1-3] Many in the pain care community believe that the primary reason for this retrogression has been pain medicine’s devolution from a ‘profession’ to a mere ‘business.’

This brief article examines aspects of this unfortunate transformation, discusses ethical implications, and describes some of the efforts that are being made to help restore the field to its noble roots as a means of enhancing quality of care, thereby reducing unnecessary suffering.

The profession of medicine has its roots in the belief that healers ‘profess,’, ie, publicly proclaim, their altruism and willingness to subordinate their own self-interests in order to help, heal, or relieve pain, suffering, and disability.[4] Much has been written in regard to the need for such a virtue ethics approach to pain medicine.[2,5-8] Tragically, however, progressively more physicians are becoming inordinately concerned with their own needs rather than with the well-being of their patients.[9,10] Lebovits[11] will address this issue more thoroughly in a forthcoming article in a special ethics series in Pain Medicine. However, a concrete example of […]