Posted on 3rd Sep 2011 @ 5:12 PM

You’ve probably heard the term “pain management doctor.” That sounds great, right? After all, who wouldn’t want to eliminate the aches and pains that an ergonomic chair and keyboard can’t fix. But wait: before you go racing to schedule an appointment, the question needs to be raised: Exactly how do these doctors treat chronic pain? And how is what they do any different from your general practitioner?

While many other medical specialties focus on determining a patient's illness or condition, pain management physicians direct their efforts toward quelling symptoms of an already-diagnosed affliction and improving the patient's quality of life. Many times, achieving this goal involves the prescription and/or administration of medications.

So are these pain management doctors nothing more than glorified drug dealers? Earlier this month, a Florida pain management doctor was arrested on charges of insurance fraud and fraudulently obtaining controlled substances. And a lawsuit has been filed in Texas against a pain management clinic which alleges that its staff instructed a woman to take 11 prescription pills, which in turn caused her to suffer a fatal overdose.

However, it is important to note that these stories -- like murders, tsunamis, and bomb attacks -- are newsworthy because they are so rare. The vast majority of pain management physicians operate fully within the law and observe longstanding codes of medical ethics. Moreover, most of these physicians believe that helping their patients overcome their pain and discomfort is priority number one -- something that cannot always be said about other health care professionals.

The reason pain management doctors have become so popular is because they take a multi-disciplined approach to alleviating pain. Certainly, prescription medications are one weapon in their fight to improving the health of their patients. But pain management physicians work with many other methods of pain relief, including:

• physical therapy
• chiropractic care
• massage
• acupuncture
• cortisone injections
• skin heating or cooling
• electrotherapy
• relaxation techniques
• dietary changes
• exercise regimens

Because pain management physicians tend to be more well-versed in all of these pain relief options, they have a better understanding of how they work in conjunction with one another. For example, these doctors study how different medications act when they are prescribed concurrently, which means they are able to reduce instances of adverse drug reactions. But more importantly, these practitioners can call on their expertise to assemble a pain management program tailored to each individual patient. So while one patient may respond well to painkillers and acupuncture, another may benefit more from chiropractic care and periodic cortisone injections -- even if the two are afflicted by the same disease.

Painting pain management doctors as drug dealers is the same as saying that the American criminal justice system focuses only on imprisonment. While prison is one sentence that can be imposed on a criminal, municipalities usually rely as much (or more) on fines, jail sentences, restitution payments, house arrest, and community service to administer justice in the eyes of the law. For pain management physicians, medications are just one of the tools in their tool belts -- but certainly not the only one they utilize.