Opiods in the Workplace

Human Resources Management

Professor Twana Ellis

Stephanie McLendon

April 16, 2017

            Opioids in the Workplace

    When people in life every day find positions at organizations and then either on the job or at home somewhere in life they experience an injury but do you believe they expect some pain relief will turn into a dependency. Maybe the employee has health issues such as cancer. More and more organizations today are having to revisit policies and procedures with the intent of protecting them and their employee against further issues if and when their employee is prescribed some type of prescription after an injury especially on the job to help for pain relief.

    Organizations have put in place some support systems to help employees like preferred time off or PTO which can be used as vacation time, sick time or bereavement time. There are special codes. When employee’s injuries are injured to some severity that may hinder them from working or changing duties the manager may reach out to Human Resources to check on employee benefits and what will sustain the employee with time off. This may change time off to short term or long term disability services for the employee and protection for the employer.

   It is extremely important that an employee notifies their employer that they have been prescribed pain medicine.

 Risks need to be addressed;

• Safety issues are addressed such as working on machinery, driving equipment such as fork lifts
• Medical decision if the employee should even be at work
• How can the organization help the employee and save their job

Not informing you employer causes risks such as;

• Injuries due to impairment of reflexes-pain medicine affects everyone different and if a person has a low tolerance for medication the affect could be very damaging
• Overdose of medication could occur
• Hurting another employee

Employees tend to hide their medical issues due to;

• Confidentiality not always happening
• Stigma as an addict
• Loss of job
• Not accepting of the issue
• Do not know chronic pain is treated as a disease like diabetes

This opioid epidemic has risen tremendously. In 2014, the number of overdose per opioid including from prescriptions and those cheaper on the street alternatives “heroin” rose to 14% the previous year. This report came from the U.S Centers for Disease Control and prevention.  (CDC) The CDC states this is alarming and this opioid epidemic is devastating to the American families and communities.

The CDC found that overdose death had risen for adults of all ages, for men and women, and among Non-Hispanic whites and blacks.In 2016 the Obama Administration asked Congress to approve an additional 1 billion to combat the problem.

I work in the hospital and per the CDC proposal new prescribing guidelines that Physicians have to try other pain regiments before prescribing opioids. This law has passed because as a “Patient Advocate” the complaints on the ‘’Pain Physician’s” and emergency room Physician’s increased to about 25% of complaints. Patients are not happy and some seem to just state what they want when going to the office visit or emergency room visit. Physicians now have been somewhat restricted as to can prescribe and patients are being referred to treatment centers. This process is stressful for the patient and some question as to how can a treatment center help when the patient has been getting treated with strong addictive does of pain medicine for the past ten or twenty years? Now they are being weaned off at an expedient rate due to these laws. This can create and has created a hostile environment in some cases for Physicians and staff.  Some Physicians feel the obligation to not permit their patient to be in pain so they would prescribe opioids. Meanwhile per the CDC there is little evident that long-termed opioid treatment improves chronic pain, function and quality of life.

In Indiana 80%  of Indiana employers surveyed in 2015 stated they had been affected by prescription drug abuse in their workplace; however, only 53% have a written policy on using medications in the workplace and this is a widespread problem. At this rate employers really need to educate themselves also. The National Safety Council provides a free Prescription Drug Employer Kit on its website www.nsc.org/rxpainkillers.

There is also a financial constraint where it has been estimated that 2.5 billion a year is missed in workdays and lost productivity. This was on a nationwide research study.