The heightened interest in pain management is making the need for appropriate boundary setting within the clinician–patient relationship even more apparent. Unfortunately, it is impossible to determine before hand, with any degree of certainty, who will become problematic users of pre- scription medications. With this in mind, a parallel is drawn between the chronic pain management paradigm and our past experience with problems identifying the “at-risk” individuals from an infectious disease model. By recognizing the need to carefully assess all patients, in a biopsychosocial model, including past and present aberrant behaviors when they exist, and by applying careful and reasonably set limits in the clinician–patient relationship, it is.
