Fear as the 6th Vital Sign

<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Back in November, 1996, the American Pain Institute introduced “Pain as the 5^th Vital Sign” as a means to diagonose where a patient was at. This, sadly, led to our opiod epidemic of an over prescription of things like oxycontin. Today, we still have this metric in place, which may be useful to some, and negligent to others. At what point do we include a level of “fear” into our medical calculations to diagnose and treat symptoms of individuals, up to a community level?</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Executive Producers: John Fletcher<br /> <br /> <a href= "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3888154/">https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3888154/</a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href= "https://www.bjanaesthesia.org/article/S0007-0912(17)54182-3/fulltext"> https://www.bjanaesthesia.org/article/S0007-0912(17)54182-3/fulltext</a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href= "https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/publichealth/57336"> https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/publichealth/57336</a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href= "https://uahs.arizona.edu/blog/2016-04-02/5th-vital-sign-and-america%E2%80%99s-painkiller-epidemic"> https://uahs.arizona.edu/blog/2016-04-02/5th-vital-sign-and-america%E2%80%99s-painkiller-epidemic</a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href= "https://www.va.gov/painmanagement/docs/toolkit.pdf">https://www.va.gov/painmanagement/docs/toolkit.pdf</a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href= "https://journals.lww.com/pain/fulltext/2016/01000/the_fifth_vital_sign_revistied.2.aspx"> https://journals.lww.com/pain/fulltext/2016/01000/the_fifth_vital_sign_revistied.2.aspx</a></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0in;"><a href= "https://www.theguardia