Amy Baxter is a clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at Augusta University, federally funded for neuromodulation research to reduce needle pain, multimodal low back pain, and opioid reduction. After attending Yale University and Emory Medical School, she completed her residency and a child maltreatment fellowship at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, an emergency pediatrics fellowship in Norfolk, Virginia, and a K30-NIH Clinical Research Certificate at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She is also CEO, Pain Care Labs, and can be reached on Twitter @AmyBaxterMD.
As a founding member of the Society for Pediatric Sedation, her scientific service includes over 20 review sections for NIDA, NICHD, and NINDS. Her contributions include the development of the hepatic enzyme algorithm for timing child abuse, the creation and validation of the BARF nausea scale for pediatric oncology, identifying the cause and consequences of needle fear, demonstrating reduced COVID-19 morbidity and mortality with nasal irrigation, and holding 12 patents on thermomechanical stimulation to reduce pain and promote healing. She also lectures internationally on pain, opioid use, health tech innovation, procedural pain management, and needle fear.
Amy Baxter is a clinical associate professor of emergency medicine at Augusta University, federally funded for neuromodulation research to reduce needle pain, multimodal low back pain, and opioid reduction. After attending Yale University and Emory Medical School, she completed her residency and a child maltreatment fellowship at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, an emergency pediatrics fellowship in Norfolk, Virginia, and a K30-NIH Clinical Research Certificate at UT Southwestern Medical Center. She is also CEO, Pain Care Labs, and can be reached on Twitter @AmyBaxterMD.
As a founding member of the Society for Pediatric Sedation, her scientific service includes over 20 review sections for NIDA, NICHD, and NINDS. Her contributions include the development of the hepatic enzyme algorithm for timing child abuse, the creation and validation of the BARF nausea scale for pediatric oncology, identifying the cause and consequences of needle fear, demonstrating reduced COVID-19 morbidity and mortality with nasal irrigation, and holding 12 patents on thermomechanical stimulation to reduce pain and promote healing. She also lectures internationally on pain, opioid use, health tech innovation, procedural pain management, and needle fear.
In retrospect, we were an addicted nation waiting to happen. Not from a self-indulgent culture, not from an unwillingness to suffer hardship, nor any of the generational criticisms of lack of grit. Our opioid crisis derives from an impatient culture that fears loss of health more than health care profit. With pain as most people’s proxy for health, we were …
At a recent scientific conference on narcotics, a researcher mused, “Honestly, opioids make me feel gross. I don’t see how anyone could get addicted.” This is a little like a doctor in the delivery end of a needle saying, “Honestly, you’re a wimp. This doesn’t hurt.” Both examples reveal a lack of empathy and a fundamental misunderstanding of current neuroscience.
The contributions or fear, reward, fight, and flight are a complicated …
Pain is the primary reason people seek medical care. Pain is also the problem that ignited the opioid crisis and continues to supply fuel. Eighty percent of opioid misuse begins with a pill prescribed for pain. Purdue invested heavily in marketing Oxycontin to physicians, training them that home opioids are the standard of care for recovery from surgery. While addiction debunked the myth of universal safety, two fallacies embedded in …
A recently published opinion article by opioid advocates attempts to assuage physicians’ prescribing guilt, arguing “doctors prescribing to their patients did not create the U.S. opioid crisis.” As lawsuit after lawsuit concludes, Purdue Pharma, Johnson and Johnson, and blindered distributors and pharmacies share the blame for propping up pills for profit. Physicians may inflate home narcotic quantities for convenience, but with rare prosecutable exceptions, not monetary gain. But the …
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