surgical care

There is a hierarchy within medicine, the referral food chain. At the top are the predators, specialists doing procedures and interventions and getting the big bucks.

I have long been fascinated by how we tell “us” from “other,” the primary job, it seems, of our immune system. But in science, the categories we have chosen as our descriptors are now being questioned.

Surgeons prescribe pain medications, makes sense; pain is a frequent “adverse” effect of surgical care. And with the drumbeats of concern over opioid addiction, physicians have reassessed our prescribing habits.