Waubonsee Community College

Quality of mercy, produced by Richard J. Adler

eng

videorecording

For College; Adult audiences

Quality of mercy

electronic resource

747798967

produced by Richard J. Adler

53

Despite all the advances in pharmacology and pain research, many patients still suffer needlessly. The most shocking example is in pediatric surgery, where major procedures are sometimes executed without anaesthesia. The rationale is that newborns do not feel pain and that anaesthetics might harm seriously ill infants. As this film shows, both these assumptions are untrue. The taboo placed on street drugs affects attitudes towards narcotics for pain relief even though patients rarely become addicted. One adolescent relates how unrelieved pain after cancer surgery prevented her from exercising, contributing to a permanent disability. Research in burn treatment conducted by Dr. Samuel Perry of New York Hospital found that nitrous oxide provided the best pain relief and had no addictive quality. Although his results have been widely publicized, medical procedures are so ingrained that nitrous oxide is still not used in 90% of hospitals. Nurses who treat these injured patients are frustrated that pain control is given such low priority

general