22 hours ago · Dec 20, 2011. James Woessner, MD, PhD. Pain, as a concept and symptom, is discussed and described throughout professional and lay medical literature. “Pain" is the reason for initial contact with any physician for the vast majority of medical problems, e.g. abdominal pain, chest pain, limb pain, low back pain, etc. Understanding pain mechanisms, however, is … >> Go To The Portal
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Taken together, these studies suggest that the presence, severity, and chronicity of pain are associated with differences in the quality and content of patient-clinician communication. Two studies of patient affect [67,72] suggest that discussions about pain and pain severity may be associated with greater overall patient emotional arousal.
Such research is necessary to identify communication “best practices,” to understand what patient-centered care looks like for discussions about chronic pain and opioids, and to identify common communication problems or challenges encountered by patients and clinicians.
Brief report: Patient-physician agreement as a predictor of outcomes in patients with back pain. J Gen Intern Med2005;20(10):935–7. [PMC free article][PubMed] [Google Scholar]
A range of psychological factors have been identified that modulate the perception of pain, including expectancy, perceived controllability, fear and anxiety, appraisal processes, perceived self-efficacy and contingencies of reinforcement (Turk, 1991; Main, 2000).
We present key articles addressing each of six domains of pain management: pharmacotherapy for acute pain; interventional treatments; medical cannabis; complementary and integrative medicine; care management in chronic pain; and prevention.
The Visual (or Verbal) Analog Scale (VAS) is the most common method for assessing pain intensity, and its change over time. The patient is presented with a 10 cm line, labeled as above, and asked to mark an `X' on the line indicating the intensity of their pain.
Pain, when it is ongoing and uncontrolled, has a detrimental, deteriorative effect on virtu- ally every aspect of a patient's life. It produces anxiety and emotional distress; undermines well-being; interferes with functional capacity; and hinders the ability to fulfill family, social, and vocational roles.
Patients should be asked to describe their pain in terms of the following characteristics: location, radiation, mode of onset, character, temporal pattern, exacerbating and relieving factors, and intensity. The Joint Commission updated the assessment of pain to include focusing on how it affects patients' function.
Dame Cicely Saunders, the founder of the modern hospice movement, recognized this and applied the term total pain as having physical, psychological, social, and spiritual components interacting upon one another (5-7).
A pain assessment is conducted to:Detect and describe pain to help in the diagnostic process;Understand the cause of the pain to help determine the best treatment;Monitor the pain to determine whether the underlying disease or disorder is improving or deteriorating, and whether the pain treatment is working.
Nurses can help patients more accurately report their pain by using these very specific PQRST assessment questions:P = Provocation/Palliation. What were you doing when the pain started? ... Q = Quality/Quantity. What does it feel like? ... R = Region/Radiation. ... S = Severity Scale. ... T = Timing. ... Documentation.
Pain Assessment ScalesNumerical Rating Scale (NRS)Visual Analog Scale (VAS)Defense and Veterans Pain Rating Scale (DVPRS)Adult Non-Verbal Pain Scale (NVPS)Pain Assessment in Advanced Dementia Scale (PAINAD)Behavioral Pain Scale (BPS)Critical-Care Observation Tool (CPOT)
The perception of, expression of, and reaction to pain are influenced by genetic, developmental, familial, psychological, social and cultural variables. Psychological factors, such as the situational and emotional factors that exist when we experience pain, can profoundly alter the strength of these perceptions.
Pain reporting in general may also be influenced by internal factors such as negative affect, and contextual factors such as interpersonal trust, expectations of biased physician perceptions and treatment, or an aversion to certain stigmas associated with pain (Koller et al., 1996; Slade et al., 2009; Buchman et al., ...
The five most common types of pain are:Acute pain.Chronic pain.Neuropathic pain.Nociceptive pain.Radicular pain.
Nerves, or neurons, are long tubes of protoplasm (rather than a series of “sausage links”) and which may, or may not, be surrounded by poor conducting myelin (insulation). Nerves generally present themselves in various sizes and characteristics and have numerous branches to other neurons.
Nociceptive pain is merely normal functioning of the neural sensor/wire/perceptron system. This system serves useful purposes in alerting the brain to bodily injury. Neuropathic and central pain, however, are manifestations of true dysfunction, and can be the “disease" itself.
Objective: A conceptual framework for patient-reported outcomes (PROs) is a structured representation of outcome concepts and issues. Our aim was to develop a conceptual framework of PROs for hormone-refractory prostate cancer (HRPC) to support measurement clarity.
In oncology treatment trials of new medical products, traditional clinical outcomes such as survival, time to disease progression, and objective responses to treatment are usually considered the “gold standards” for determining treatment effectiveness. However, these are not the only outcomes of relevance to patients.
We combined information extracted from the published literature with input from patients and experts along with independent verification using analyses of archival data. The flow of work appears in Figure 1.
We used a combination of qualitative and quantitative methods to derive a conceptual framework of PROs for metastatic HRPC.
We have developed a conceptual framework of salient, patient-relevant outcome issues for metastatic HRPC. It identifies several critical target areas for assessment including, disease symptoms, treatment side effects, psychological concerns, and general aspects of QOL.