Effective Pain Assessments

“Pain is much more than a physical sensation caused by a specific stimulus. An individual's perception of pain has important affective (emotional), cognitive, behavioral, and sensory components that are shaped by past experience, culture, and situational factors. The nature of the stimulus for pain can be physical, psychological, or a combination of both.” (Potter, Perry, Stockert, Hall, & Peterson, 2014 p. 141) As stated by Potter et al, the different natures of pain are dealt with differently depending on many factors. Knowing this, treating pain can be very difficult as there is no single or clear cut way of measuring it; “Even though the assessment and treatment of pain is a universally important health care issue,

Step one, Geraldine pains will be monitored and documented at a regular interval by asking her to score her pain on a scale of (0-10) with 0 meaning zero pains and 10 being highly in pain. This will help in evaluating her cancer-related pain symptoms, which may involve viscera, nerve, or bone tissue. Use of rating scale aids helps in assessing level of pain and provides a tool for evaluating the effectiveness of analgesics, enhancing patient control of pain. Geraldine’s reported and unreported pain will be assessed. The discrepancy between reported and nonverbal cue can give us clues to the degree of pain, the effectiveness of

Pain is the most common chief complaint among patients with a variety of diseases, and it

Adequate pain assessment is essential for measuring the efficacy of treatment in clinical practice, provide patient with target pain treatment, and avoid the high number of non-responders.15 Clinically, valuable pain assessment would associate certain signs and symptoms that comprise the pain phenotype with underlying mechanisms.15 Methods such as quantitative sensory testing, functional imaging, skin biopsies and genetic screening are assessment tools provide valuable information regarding the neurobiology of pain.15 However, these tools are expensive, require technical expertise and not suitable for routine assessment of a patient’s pain.15 Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish biopsychosocial pain profiling of multiethnic

According to research, various factors contribute to poor pain management in post-op care. The duality of under medication and overmedication is due to inadequate and insufficient pain assessment. This paper explores the reasons behind the lack of post-op pain attitudes, treatment, and evaluation. Both patients and nurses’ attitudes to pain stems from insufficient assessment tools and evaluations. Pain is a subjective symptom and is very difficult to qualify during comparative studies. Most research on patients’ post-op experience are found on older adults, ranging from acute to chronic care. Without a broader age range and ethnicities, it is difficult to make conclusions, due to a gaping hole in quantitative research. Further research

In conclusion it can be seen that early and regular pain assessment on par with other vital parameters along with appropriate treatment by all healthcare providers will lead to improved patient outcomes and satisfaction. This can be achieved by education, use of departmental guidelines and protocols,regular audit of practice and feedback to the professional involved.

Rationale: The first step to assessing pain is to determine if the patient can report their pain. The patient was asked to rate their pain intensity or select descriptors of pain intensity using a valid and reliable self-report pain tool (McCaffery, Herr, & Pasero, 2011).

Furthermore, this activity has linked to my overarching goal because through a literature search and completing a data extraction table of at least three articles that are recent (within the past 5 years), I have acknowledged various pain assessment tools used in oncology patients. I am able to compare and contrast different pain assessment tools and choose which is more insightful and effective to evaluate my patient’s pain, which will then help me improve my pain assessment

A comprehensive assessment of breakthrough cancer pain which also examines whether the pain is caused by uncontrolled background pain should be completed for every patient at every incident of pain (European Oncology Nursing Society, 2013). It is important to distinguish breakthrough cancer pain from uncontrolled background pain, as the two types of pain are different and require individual assessment and therapy (Davies et al. 2009; Mercadante et al, 2002; Mercadante, 2011). Davies et al. (2009) have adapted a previous diagnostic algorithm created by Portenoy et al (1999), which aids practitioners to distinguish between breakthrough cancer pain and uncontrolled background pain- see figure 3.

‘Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage’ (International association for the study of pain 2014). Pain can be made up of complex and subjective experiences. The experience of pain is highly personal and private, and can not be directly observed or measured from one person to the next (Mac Lellan 2006). According to the agency for health care policy and research 1992, an individuals self-report of pain is the most reliable indicator of its presence. This is also supported by Mc Caffery’s definition in 1972, when he said ‘Pain is whatever the experiencing patient says it is, existing whenever he says it does’.

Although there are several pain assessment tools for pain measurement, poorly controlled John’s cancer pain will be a significant problem of John’s health. According to Kumar, (2011). There are many barriers that lead to under treatment of cancer pain. One important barrier is inadequate measurement and assessment of pain. The Pain Research Group of the world health organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Symptom Evaluation in Cancer Care had developed the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), a pain assessment tool use for cancer patients (Kumar, 2011). The Brief Pain Inventory (BPI) has become one of the most widely used measurement tools for assessing clinical pain. BPI will allow John’s to rate the severity of his pain and the degree to which

Numerical Rating Scale for Pain Intensity (NRSI) is a verbally administered scale that measures pain intensity (‘‘how much pain do you feel right now?’’). The NRS can also be used to measure pain unpleasantness (‘‘how unpleasant/horrible/yucky is the pain right now?’’). The end points represent the extremes of the pain experience. for pain intensity, 0 = ‘‘no pain at all’’ to 10 = ‘‘worst possible pain’’; for pain unpleasantness, 0 = ‘‘not at all unpleasant/horrible/yucky’’ to 10 = ‘‘most unpleasant/ horrible/yucky feeling possible.’’ clinic staff members ask patients to rate the intensity of their current pain on a scale of 0 (“no pain”) to 10 (“worst possible pain”).. Based on previous studies and clinical practice,

M. Carrington Reid, Christopher Eccleston, and Karl Pillemer compiled a systematic review of chronic pain in older adults. Their sources, published during the past five years, were systematic reviews, meta-analyses, high quality randomized controlled trails, and clinical guidelines. They determined that not only is chronic pain a worldwide problem but that geriatric patients often suffer from chronic pain. In order to treat chronic pain a comprehensive geriatric pain assessment must be completed. They also determined that based on the current evidence a multimodal approach should be used including pharmaceutical and non-pharmaceutical approaches to pain management.

An experience that medical professionals like to define in much broader terms, one that states that “Pain is whatever the patient says it is, existing wherever the experiencing person says it is” (Farrell, 2005). This definition very much emphasises how subjective in nature the whole pain experience tends to be, because it relies not only totally on the patient’s ability to self-report on their level of pain being experienced, but also on how effective their pain management interventions have been (Farrell, 2005). This important tool known as a pain assessment not only aids in making a diagnosis of a patient’s medical condition, it also gives medical staff a reliable indicator of the patient’s location of pain, its quality and intensity, onset and duration, and any measures that help to relief it (Crisp & Taylor, 2009). A failure to carry out such an assessment could result in not only in the patient suffering with unnecessary pain, but can also result in the patient experiencing symptoms such as stress, fatigue, insomnia, an inability to eat or mobilize, social isolation or depression (Crisp & Taylor, 2009). Unfortunately these particular symptoms

Mcgill-Melzack Pain Questionnaire. Another form of pain assessment questionnaire that, “contains 3 major classes of word descriptors: sensory, affective, and evaluative which are used to specify a patient’s subjective pain experience. It also contains an intensity scale and other items to determine the properties of pain experience” (Brook et al, 2011) Therefore, I conclude that, using any methods of pain assessment is soundly appropriate in practice. HCPC standards of proficiency of ODP guidelines stated that OPD’s should “be able to assess and monitor the service user’s pain status and as appropriate administer prescribed pain relief in accordance with national and local guidelines”. For image, see appendix