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Using it for (other people's) pain management, I don't really care about how "nice" the high is (and I don't have any experience with it personally). The main
by JshWright 8y ago
Using it for (other people's) pain management, I don't really care about how "nice" the high is (and I don't have any experience with it personally).
The main reason I like fentanyl is that it peaks much earlier than morphine. The most common reason I administer opioids is due to a musculoskeletal injury of some sort. Often those patients would experience a significant amount of pain while being moved and loaded into the ambulance. Fentanyl acts quickly enough that it's worth it to administer it before starting to move them. With morphine that's just a waste of time. Better to get them moved and then medicate them on the way to the hospital.
- girvo 8y agoI wasn’t suggesting you were :) was more discussing a tangential point. In Australia, if they are conscious they typically get them to use methoxyflurane (the “green whistle”). It’s quite nice, and very effective!
- JshWright 8y agoYeah, but it also does very unkind things to your liver and kidneys... It was never used in EMS in the United States, and surgical anesthesiologists stopped using back in the 90's. Some parts of the US do use nitrous oxide in an EMS setting though (technically it's in my protocols, but I don't know of any agencies around here that carry it).