Doctors Struggle to Find Pain Fakers

Tuesday, 05 July 2011 | by Pat's Picks

When it comes to measuring pain, medical technology hasn’t advanced very far past the point-to-the-corresponding-cartoon-face chart. That means doctors are left to their own devices to determine who’s genuinely in pain, says the Wall Street Journal, and who’s faking it. It’s become a much bigger problem as opiate painkillers continue to grow in popularity among drug abusers. That, plus a widely disseminated report by the Institute of Medicine, which found that when it comes to pain, Americans are woefully under-diagnosed has put doctors in the middle of a rock and a hard place. The IOM report found that even people with legitimate pain don’t feel comfortable asking for relief because they fear being stigmatized as “potential criminals.”