Night Shift Doctors and Analgesics

Almost 60% of US adults report having experienced pain in the past 3 months and pain is one of the main reasons American adults seek medical care. Intriguingly, although providing adequate pain relief is a major task of the healthcare system, there are currently no clear-cut and standardized pain management protocols in place. As such, physicians are tasked with making complex assessments of patients’ subjective pain and integrating various medical factors to determine whether or not to prescribe pain medication. Consequentially, the subjective nature of pain management makes such decisions vulnerable to a host of biases, such as the race or the gender of the patient.