White patients in emergency department visits are more likely to receive opioids, powerful painkillers, than patients who are not white, according to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). This is despite the fact that the use of opioids to treat pain-related emergency department visits has improved over the last 15 years. During the 1990s there was a national focus on the problem of inadequately treated pain, the authors explain. [click link for full article]