When suffering a serious injury, like a bone fracture, most people aren’t jonesing for OTC pain killers – they want the good stuff, like Vicodin or morphine. However, a new study finds that we shouldn’t turn up our noses at the humble brown pill: For children suffering bone fractures, ibuprofen is just as effective a pain reliever as morphine, and much safer.

“Evidence suggests that orally administered morphine and other opioids are increasingly being prescribed,” writes Dr. Naveen Poonai, London Health Sciences Centre and Western University, London, Ontario, with coauthors. “However, evidence for the oral administration of morphine in acute pain management is limited. Thus, additional studies are needed to address this gap in knowledge and provide a scientific basis for outpatient analgesic choices in children.”

The study examined 134 children aged 5 to 17 years, and the group was split between oral morphine and ibuprofen when experiencing bone fractures that did not require surgery. The study is not far-fetched, as bone fractures are believed to account for any where from 10% to 25% of all child injuries. The most acute pain experienced following a fracture typically occurs within the first 48 hours.

In the end, the researchers found that while both drugs seemed equally effective at mitigating pain, those prescribed ibuprofen experienced fewer “adverse events,” thus suggesting that ibuprofen is the safer choice for pain relief.

“Given that morphine was associated with significantly more adverse effects, we conclude that ibuprofen remains a safe and effective therapy for outpatient management of children’s fracture pain,” write the authors. “We hope that our results will provide clinicians with a foundation for rational analgesic choices for children with fractures who are discharged from the emergency department.”