Pharmacology for Technicians: Acute Pain Medications

Pain medications are vast and many. Surprisingly and yet obviously, the causes of pain are also vast and many. ‘Acute’ means severe or intense, usually short-term type of pain. Examples of acute pain scenarios include surgical and trauma, mechanical and compression, infectious, sickle cell, and labor and delivery pain. All of these will be discussed in this session. Depending on the cause of pain, it will be managed differently. Some pain medications have inherently more risk than others and understanding these risks is essential to providing the best patient care possible. The purpose of this session is to highlight causes of acute pain and its differences from chronic [long-term] pain, describe how pain medications augment the sensations of pain both physically and mechanistically, and to address risks associated with all these medications.