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Physicians’ Responsibility with Prescription Drug Abuse

Abstract

The discharge of a patient found to be abusing their prescription represents a tragic outcome – that of a missed opportunity to provide appropriate continuity of care for a newly discovered (and recognized) medical problem of the substance use disorder. As physicians we need to realize (as with the acetaminophen case) that we have just as much medicine to practice to help our patients solve their substance use disorder as we practiced while accompanying them to that point of developing a substance use disorder.