HOSPITALS PUT NEW FOCUS ON PAIN CONTROL; HAILED AS POSITIVE ALTERNATIVE TO EUTHANASIA

Beginning January 1, 2001, the accrediting authority for the nation's hospitals is requiring hospitals regularly to measure how much pain patients are experiencing. This treats pain as the "fifth vital sign" along with blood pressure, temperature, pulse, and respiration.

This requirement will push physicians and hospital personnel to attend to the need effectively to control each patient's pain.

"One of the principal reasons why some in the general public are initially sympathetic to the idea of euthanasia or assisting suicide is their fear of pain," commented Burke J. Balch, Director of NRLC's Department of Medical Ethics. "We know that at the frontiers of modern medicine it is possible to control all physical pain, but that too frequently this knowledge is not put into effect at the clinical level."

Balch added, "The monitoring of pain that will occur, we may hope, will lead to widespread implementation of advanced pain management techniques."

Conscious patients will regularly be asked to rank pain on a scale of 1 to 10. Children will be asked to choose from a sequence of smiling and crying faces.

When pain is found, medication should be prescribed for it, and an hour later patients will be asked for another pain ranking. If pain has not been successfully controlled, dosages will be changed or different medications used, and non-drug therapies may also be employed.

Hospitals that fail to comply with the new requirements could lose their accreditation.