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Post Appropriate pain management over family objections
Author: andreaholtzer
Date: Apr 2, 2012 1:00 pm
Several times in the past few months, we have encountered families who objected to appropriate pain management for their loved ones who were near death. They objected because they felt the pain medication was causing their loved ones to become sedated. (There is an excellent article on this in the February 2012 issue of the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management by Blinderman.) Is anyone aware of other articles on this topic? Has anyone updated their Pain Management policies to address family objection of pain medication? Any help is appreciated.
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Re:Appropriate pain management over family objections (by ultrapollo08 on 04/02/2012)
In our facility, the palliative care team has been consulted for pain management and we run into the family refusal to treat pain. Our Risk Management department is supportative and remind us that pain management is the standard of care and it is unethical to not treat the pain. We have one incident that the family continued to insist on not using pain medication. The facility called Adult Protective Services and they were supportive of this and stated the facility was to provide that standard of care and we use the term Assume Pain Present.

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