Patient Satisfaction With Subdissociative Dose Ketamine Versus Morphine for Emergency Department Pain Control

Informed consent will be obtained from patients presenting with chief complaint of moderate to severe abdominal pain in the emergency department who do not meet any exclusion criteria and who willingly agree to participate by signing the written consent form. Investigators will assess the patient's opioid tolerance by asking if they have use an opioid medication in the last week, prescription opioid use at home, and/or recreational opioid use. Patients in both groups will fill out the pre-treatment questionnaire, which will include demographic questions (age, sex, race, height, weight, etc.), a 10cm (100mm) VAS for pain, a 10cm (100mm) VAS to measure patient satisfaction, and a Likert Scale to measure patient satisfaction. Post-treatment survey will be given at 30 minutes after administration of medication. The physician will record whether the patient required additional pain medication after the 30 minutes, final emergency department diagnosis, and final emergency department disposition.

Inclusion criteria

• Be at least 18 years of age
• Initial presenting complaint of moderate to severe abdominal pain (five or higher on numerical rating scale [NRS]).
• Subjects will be enrolled into the project one (1) time only.

Exclusion criteria

• Under 18 years of age
• Pregnant patients
• Inability to provide written consent
• Evidence of traumatic brain injury
• Hemodynamic instability
• Procedures involving laryngeal manipulation
• History of laryngeal spasm
• History of adverse reaction to Ketamine or morphine
• Patients will not be excluded if they had received pain medications prior to enrollment (ie. Received pain medication from triage, non-physician provider (NPP), or emergency medical services (EMS) prior to being seen by physician
• History of opioid use in the last week, prescription opioid use, recreational opioid use