Make the pain go away
First I'd like to introduce myself. I'm Karen Donovan and work with David Williams at MedPharma Partners since its inception. In fact, David and I first started working together almost 17 years ago at LEK Consulting.I wonder if any of you noticed the article in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal titled "Just a Spoonful of Sugar...". It stuck out for me personally as my son has been sick at home over the past few days and sometimes has a hard time taking his medicine. The WSJ article focuses on pain management techniques for infants including sugar water, numbing cream, and even breastfeeding. The author's choice of a title was particularly timely for me as we just watched Mary Poppins last week. It was great when the children had been out playing in the rain and caught a cold, and Julie Andrews sang that song to get the children to take their medicine. It's a great song, and we've all been singing it for days after.Pain management for otherwise healthy infants is one thing, but pain management for terminally-ill patients is an entirely different story. I dealt with pain management most prominently while I worked at VITAS, the nation's largest hospice company, during the mid-1990s. Pain management or palliative care is one of the central tenets of hospice - focusing not just on the physical dimension but also the spiritual and psychosocial dimensions as well. Its holistic approach in helping terminally-ill patients die with dignity emphasizes quality not quantity of life. Hospice doesn't change the inevitable, but instead makes it a little easier and sweeter for not just the patient but the family as well. It's not exactly what the play or movie had in mind, but I suppose it's a different type of "spoonful of sugar."Â