Summary
In new podcast - Dr. Kertesz asks hard questions about the medical profession’s response to pain
In the latest podcast episode from “On Becoming a Healer”, cohosts Stefan Kertesz and Saul Weiner, both physicians, focus a critical eye on how their own profession responds to people with pain.
It’s titled: Why are we addicted to talking about opioids rather than helping people with chronic pain?
In this episode, Dr. Kertesz and cohost Dr. Weiner explore how physicians have been pushed to adopt simplistic understandings of pain that don’t reflect the latest science and fail to reflect a true partnership with patients.
Rather, in Kertesz’s words, “the medical profession is addicted to talking about opioids, and by that, I mean, talking about not prescribing them”.
Both hosts observe that in an earlier era, doctors were pushed to prescribe opioids, without seeking to understand the patients. Now, while the direction of prescribing changed, the lack of real engagement is constant. They zero in on a recent declaration from the American College of Physicians (the main organization for internal medicine doctors) endorsing quality measures based on opioid dose, a position that contradicts the CDC’s 2024 declaration that those quality measures proved harmful to patients.
But both physicians express even greater distress that the same statement gave a formal “thumbs down” to measuring whether patients with pain felt their care as helpful to them.
The views reflected in the podcast do not reflect formal positions or views of the CSI:OPIOIDs research project, which must focus on the evidence it produced. At the same time, we have heard from many people with pain that they don’t feel the medical profession is listening, and this latest podcast may be of real interest to many.
Find On Becoming a Healer wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, YouTube
