Tylenol.

I promise to write about things other than being sick.

A few months ago, I asked a nurse in the ER why hospitals like Tylenol so much. There’s an opioid crisis, he said. “I get that,” I said, “but why Tylenol instead of something like ibuprofen, or any of the other non-opioid pain killers?” On this he was less certain. The GI effects of NSAIDs like ibuprofen were a possible reason. Tylenol was less complicated, maybe. (Neither here nor there but did you know that we don’t know how Tylenol works? Now you do, if you didn’t, I guess.)

When I’d looked this up on my own, what I found was this article from 1987 saying it’s because Tylenol is significantly cheaper, though that was about the brand more than the pain killer itself. When it comes to the actual medicine, the explanation is similar to my ER nurse’s speculation: “Hospitals prefer acetaminophen—the active ingredient in Tylenol—because it has fewer side effect…