An ethnography of chronic pain management in primary care: The social organization of physicians' work in the midst of the opioid crisis.

Our findings show that care providers find the treatment of patients with chronic pain-especially those patients also experiencing poverty-to be challenging at best, and at worst frustrating and overwhelming. In many instances, their narratives suggested experiences of depersonalization, loss of job satisfaction and emotional exhaustion in relation to providing care for these patients, key dimensions of burnout. In essence, the work that they performed in relation to their patients' social rather than medical needs seems to contribute to these experiences. Their experiences were further exacerbated by the fact that restricting and reducing opioid dosing in patients with chronic pain has become a major focus of care provision.