Pain is one of the most influential symptoms that leads individuals to reach out to health care professionals to seek relief. Pain is subjective and unique to each person. Some individuals may have a higher pain tolerance than others. According to Frandsen (2014), “Pain is an unpleasant, sensory, emotional sensation associated with actual or potential tissue injury” (p. 889). Pain may be caused by a variety of elements, such as tissue or nerve damage and surgery. There are three main categories that pain is classified by, which are origin, duration, and cause. The main focus of this paper is on acute pain, chronic pain, and phantom pain. It is crucial to know how to assess each type of pain, as well as how to enhance it, or decrease the pain.
Literature Review
Pain in the long-term care facility is very common whether we are dealing with acute, chronic, or phantom pain. It is important that you correctly assess, diagnose, and treat all kinds of pain.
Assessing pain is a very important first step. Having the correct assessment techniques and tools is very important to diagnosing and treating the pain. Acute pain is typically a symptom of something else, so correct assessment will lead the care provider to the underlying issue, D’Amico and Barbarito (2016) identify many tools used for the assessment of pain, discussed later in the paper. Treatment of acute pain should be handled differently than other types of pain due to acute pain being a short-term process of healing. The
“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,
According to The World Health Organisation (1999), defined pain as an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage. Pain is traditionally described as acute or chronic pain. The prevalence of chronic pain (CP) is higher than of acute of pain, as it affects 7.8 million people of all ages in the UK (Chronic Pain Policy Coalition., 2006). The current leading cause of mortality that is accounting for 60% of all deaths is due to chronic diseases and is also a problem as causes an increasing burden on the health care service (World Health Organisation., 2007). CP can affect a person’s quality of life if managed poorly, statistics shows that 25% of people lose their job and 22% leads to depression. (Chronic Pain Policy Coalition.,
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
(REARDON, ANGER & SZUMITA, 2015.). There are two ways to assess pain which they have been used for long time. The first way is Visual analog Scale. The second way is Numeric Rating Scale which means patient should rate their pain in scale of (0-10) zero is no pain and 10 is the worst pain. REARDON, D. P., ANGER, K. E., & SZUMITA, P. M. (2015). However, “the nurse also judged patiens’ pain based on their appearance and mobility, and investigated any potential complications by conducting physical examination. The nurses often rechecked the pain levels in order to clarify and ensure that the recorded pain levels corresponded to the causes of the pain and suffering” (Chatchumni, Namvongprom, Eriksson, & Mazaheri, 2016) patients also may report no improvement for their pain even though with high dose of opioid and ask for high dose of opioid while the nurses noticed them sleeping or
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
Chronic pain is any pain that lasts longer than 3 months (FNLM, 2011). A common type of chronic pain is neuropathic pain which occurs when the nerves themselves are damaged by injury or disease (Veteran Mates, 2013). Neuropathic pain is a complex condition that is often underdiagnosed or undertreated, resulting in negative physical, psychological and social impacts (Veteran Mates, 2013). Therefore early management is critical in order to improve the person’s quality of life and to reduce the chance of the pain becoming persistent (Pain Health, 2015). The following 5 articles relating to the management of neuropathic pain will be annotated, including a summary of the main
The etiology of chronic pain is complex and may be due to a number of different factors. Current therapeutics often fail to produce adequate analgesia for moderate-to-severe pain
Pain is an obvious consequence of injuries and surgery, but it is also a common symptom of ill health. A complex experience, with many variables that can influence the patient experience and interpretation. The various factors include age, gender, culture influences, social class, personality and emotional factors such as anxiety, fear and depression which do not necessarily increase the patient’s pain experience, but will affect their reaction to it.
Pain is defined as the patient’s described experience to actual or potential tissue damage (Yukari, Noriko, & Okamoto, 2010). It is an issue in the care of any patient, because pain adversely affects the health of the patient. Not only is pain uncomfortable, it causes the release of specific hormones, adrenaline, and other chemicals that make healing difficult, if not impossible. It decreases patient mobility, leading to complications of secondary pneumonia and pressure ulcers (Yukari, Noriko, & Okamoto, 2010). It can have such a severe effect on the body that it may cause a shock like syndrome that can cause death (Yukari, Noriko, & Okamoto, 2010). For all of these reasons, pain management is paramount to any patient care plan.
Previous research has indicated that the chronic pain is a common medical complaint among long-term care residents, which is often under-diagnosed and undertreated or inadequately treated. Natan, Ataneli, Admenko and Noy (2013) concluded the need of pain assessment training focusing on positive attitudes towards older adults as part of pre service-nursing career. The purpose of this descriptive correlational study was to identify factors predicting nurses’ performance of pain assessment among older long-term care residents and to examine variables associated with ageist attitude. Study was conducted among 104 nurses of long term care facility. Multiple linear regression analysis was done to examine the association between the variables.
Pain management in burn unit hospitals continues to be a major challenge for many hospitalized patients of all ages. Patients who are required to be hospitalized are usually ones who have moderate to severe burns that result in traumatic tissue damages. The topic of this research paper will be about pain management in patients with burns. The purpose of this paper is stated in following as a patient intervention comparison and outcome (PICO) format, in patients with severe burns who requires routine dressing changes, how does the combination of pharmacological and non-pharmacological pain management compare to using pharmacological pain management alone affect the patient’s overall pain experience?
Chronic pain relief has now emerged with new and great techniques and treatments. The researchers and surgeons are now enhanced with effective drugs to implant and electrical stimulation. The birth of chronic pain can be due to various reasons like from an accident affecting much too sensitive veins and muscles, back injuries, an injury caused while playing sport, and chronic pain can also be occur from health conditions like migraines, diabetes, arthritis, shingles, and cancer. It is not important that a person will be suffering from chronic pain only; he may suffer from acute pain too. The acute pain causes are
The major concepts of this theory are defined theoretically since the use of these definitions is from a broader theoretic concept. Therefore, an operational concept could be developed from them. There is consistency in the use of these concepts throughout the theory of acute pain management with examples given using the same language as well as maintaining the integrity of the concepts.
According to John Hopkins Medicine (n.d.), pain is an uncomfortable feeling that tells you something may be wrong. It can be fixed, throbbing, stabbing, aching, pinching, or described in many other ways. Pain is categorized as either acute or chronic. Acute pain is usually severe and brief, and is often a signal that your body has been injured. Chronic pain can vary from mild to severe and is there for long periods of time (John Hopkins Medicine, n.d). This paper will discuss a scenario that entails which person is experiencing the most pain, how two people can have the same procedure experience different levels of pain, factors that contribute to each person’s pain level, and two complementary/alternative methods of pain control.
Pain is defined as an unpleasant sensory and affective experience associated with tissue damage. Pain is a major symptom in many medical conditions and is one of the most sited reasons why people seek medical assistance (Peterson & Bredow 2009). When pain is poorly managed, it can delay healing and recovery. Using the proper nursing assessment skill is very important to assess a patient’s pain level, and determine the best intervention to reduce or eliminate it. Middle range theory such as Pain: a balance between analgesia and side effects and the theory of unpleasant symptoms (TOUS) helps interpret and serves as a tool used in assessing patients in nursing practice.