“Every single physician I knew at the time was told to be much more serious about making pain a priority,” said Dr. John Burton, the head of emergency medicine for Carilion Clinic, the largest medical provider in western Virginia. “All it did was drive up our opioid prescribing without really understanding the consequences of what we were doing. “I can remember telling my residents, ‘A patient can’t get hooked on fourteen days’ worth of [opioid] pills.’ And I was absolutely wrong.”
