 Sample size calculation: There is no consensus about what constitutes a clinically significant difference in treatment between racial and ethnic groups. In the absence of such a consensus we based our estimates of effect size on previous findings.11, 12 We used estimates of 75, 50 and 60 respectively for proportion of whites, African-American, and Hispanics treated with any analgesic, a two-tailed significance level of 0.05, and a power of 80 to calculate a sample size of at least 70 patients with long-bone fractures in each of the three groups. 