Pain Assessment Scale
Pain Assessment Scale
Pain Assessment Scale will help you to assess severity of pain, to consult your family doctor for medication. Self-medication should be avoided, may cause serious adverse drug reactions.
What is Pain Assessment Scale?
Pain Assessment Scale is a numeric rating scale from 0 to 1.
Zero means no pain and 10 means excruciating pain.
It is described as follows-
- No pain
1 to 2- Least pain
- to 4- Mild pain
5 to 6- Moderate pain
7 to 8- Severe pain
9 to 10- Excruciating pain
Asking the patient to put a finger on scale numbering from 0 to 10, explaining to patient as 0 means no pain and 10 means maximum pain.
What is Pain?
The experience of pain is unique to each person and influenced by many factors, including the patients’ prior experiences with pain. Pain means emotional stresses, and family and cultural influences. It is a subjective and multi-faceted phenomenon, and clinicians cannot reliably detect its existence or quantify its severity without asking the patient directly.
What is Acute Pain?
Acute pain resolves within the expected period of healing. It is a sudden pain, bring the patients to doctors immediately, needs emergency treatment.
Examples – Pain due to dental caries, kidney stones, surgery, or trauma.
What is Chronic Pain?
Chronic pain may begin as acute pain that then fails to resolve and extends beyond the expected period of healing.
Examples–
- Chronic low-back pain
- Arthralgias (Joint pain),
- Chronic abdominal pain
- Pelvic pain (often visceral in origin)
- Chronic headaches
- Peripheral neuropathy
- Postherpetic neuralgia (neuropathic origin)
What is the aim of pain management?
The aim of effective pain management is to meet specific goals, such as preservation or restoration of function or quality of life, and this aim must be discussed between provider and patient, as well as their family.
For example, some patients may wish to be completely free of pain even at the cost of significant sedation, while others will wish to control pain to a level that still allows maximal cognitive functioning.
References
- Current Medical Diagnosis and Treatment
- Harrison’s Principle of Internal Medicine
- Pain Assessment