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Health

10th Dec 2016

Doctors have told of the tell tale signs when patient is lying for drugs

Rebecca Keane

This is very interesting.

Whether it’s trying to renew a prescription for someone who can’t muster the energy to go out or getting the morning after pill for your friend who’s too embarrassed to go to the doctor herself (absolutely nothing to be ashamed of ladies) we’ve all been tempted to try lie to the doctor.

While I personally have never gotten away with it, it turns out that all those lies some people tell the doc to get certain pills on the regular are noticed by the professionals.

bugs

According to ATTN, two doctors have confessed the red flags of drug-seeking behaviour. Casey Grover, an emergency medicine specialist, and Joshua Elder, a postdoctoral fellow at Yale University’s Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Program

Emergency medicine specialist Casey Grover and a postdoctoral student at Yale University, Joshua Elder published a study on the behaviours people lying exude.

Elder, who practices emergency medicine told of indicators which imply drug-seeking behaviour such as complaining of headache, back and dental pain, requesting medication a refill of drugs and/or requesting a prescription by name.

He also said patients reporting medicine as being lost or stolen or run out and rating their pain more than 10 out of 10 were likely factors of drug-seeking behaviour.

While there’s whole extensive list of indicators mentioned, Grover admitted that at most times, doctors just rely on their gut instinct as to whether  a patient is in pain or unnecessarily asking for drugs.

“It’s basically a physician’s gut feeling, almost, that a person is trying to get medication for non-therapeutic reasons — and it’s really, really hard…

“Really, what we’re looking for is people trying to get medications because of addiction and not because of uncontrolled pain. And what makes it even more complicated is that the line between the two is extremely blurry.”