preview

The Satisfaction With Pain Level

Decent Essays

When data from all four studies were combined, there were 806 patients who completed the satisfaction questionnaire. Of these patents, 447 (56%) were satisfied with their pain level, 291 (37%) were not satisfied with their pain level, and 68 (8%) were not sure if they were satisfied with their pain level (Table 2).
There were statistically significant but weak correlation coefficients for satisfaction with pain level and current (rs=-.34, p=<.01), least (rs=-.24, p=<.01) and worst (rs=-.34 p=.<.01) pain intensity. Also, there was a weak linear correlation between satisfaction with pain level and API (rs=-.36, p=.01) (Table 4). Mean current, least, worst and API scores were compared by satisfaction with pain level as shown in Table 3. …show more content…

Discussion
This study of outpatients with cancer is the first to show that when satisfaction is measured with an item focused on pain level there are slightly more than half of the patients who are were satisfied with their pain levels and the mean pain intensity scores differ significantly as would be expected. The differences between the mean API score of subjects reporting "no" and "yes" on the satisfaction with pain level item (4.68 versus 2.26, respectively) was significant. This supports our hypothesis that the more intense the pain, the less satisfaction with pain level the patient will report. In contrast with other researchers who have not found associations between satisfaction with pain management and pain intensity, we found that when the pain score and satisfaction is measured specifically related to the amount of pain the person has, patients with cancer and higher pain intensity are not satisfied but those with lower pain intensity are satisfied. This finding is intuitive, but has eluded other researchers in their studies of patients who had pain related to a variety of conditions, including those with cancer and recovering from surgery. Our findings from a large sample of patients indicate that satisfaction with pain level can be used as an outcome of pain treatment effectiveness. Also, our sample included patients in all four stages of

Get Access