I recently emailed everyone about how my parent organization (AAFP) rolled over to a new government initiative that will demand physicians retrain in order to prescribe pain medication. Forget the fact that they are the ones who put out tons of mandates and warnings in the past that we were NOT treating pain adequately. Now they want to add another bureaucratic mandate because it is OUR fault patients are abusing these meds. I recently blogged about this and you can check it out here for more info. Instead of fighting back we are caving in. Enough is enough. I asked people to write in to the AAFP (if they were members) and you can see their responses here . Thank you all. For those in other specialties, please do the same. Sound the alarm. In fact, a new idea has arisen. If we don't do the "retraining" then we can't prescribe narcotics. Well, that is fine with me and a lot of other docs. Let's BOYCOTT the bastards. It's not like I love giving these drugs anyway. We must stand together on this or they will make us retrain on any new bureaucratic initiative they can think of (diabetes, rectal exams, auscultation, rapid strep, etc). Please spread this around and save what autonomy is left in this rapidly demoralizing profession.
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