The Lucky 7: Classes of Meds for Pain Management The list goes beyond opioids alone. Pain management is basically a dirty word among nurse practitioners and physician assistants today. We shun patients on long-term pain medications and grow weary of requests for “that medicine that I had that one time – it starts with a ‘D’…”. The opioid problem and our resulting hesitancy to prescribe pain medications has become so bad that a patient comes to see us with something like an acute femur fracture..