People are frequently introduced to highly addictive opioid painkillers when using hospital emergency rooms. When University of Colorado and University of Massachusetts medical researchers surveyed 109 emergency medicine physicians at four hospitals, they found that 65 percent of them significantly underestimated how many opioids they were prescribing compared to their peers. In six- and 12-month follow-ups, the researchers consequently found that opioid orders by all the doctors surveyed dropped by 3.5 and 4.3 percent, respectively. Those shown that they had been overprescribing lowered their rates even more, by an additional 2.1 and 2.2 percent.

This article appears in the September 2018 issue of Natural Awakenings.