Chapter 2: Patient Assessment
2.3 Pain Assessment
Critical Thinking Exercises: Questions, Answers, and Sources / References
Critical thinking questions are in bold type, and the answers are italicized. Additional resources or references are provided below.
- You are caring for a patient who has just returned from a surgical procedure. How might the assessment of acute pain differ from the assessment of chronic pain?
Chronic pain will likely be familiar to the individual. Upon return from surgery, and depending on the nature of the surgery, the patient will probably experience pain that is different than what they are used to. For example, a person with chronic hip pain who undergoes a hip replacement may experience pain relief and/or may experience a different type of pain.
It is still important to complete a thorough OPQRST (onset; provoking/palliation; quality; radiating/region; severity; treatment) assessment. Treatment of acute pain may be different than treatment of chronic pain, and it may require the addition of new classes of analgesic and/or increased doses of meds the patient is familiar with.
Source:
Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO). (2013, December). Clinical best practice guidelines: Assessment and management of pain (3rd ed.). https://rnao.ca/sites/rnao-ca/files/AssessAndManagementOfPain_15_WEB-_FINAL_DEC_2.pdf
2. What is more important in pain assessment: subjective or objective data?
Both are important. Subjective data is what the patient tells you, and this must be regarded because pain affects people differently. According to RNAO (2013), self-reporting pain is the most reliable indicator of a patient’s experience which might suggest subjective data is most important.
Objective data is the outward signs that suggest the patient has pain. The observable signs can vary between individuals. They can be influenced by culture, gender, and other factors, and thus observable signs can not be used to definitively say a person is or isn’t experiencing pain.
Source:
Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO). (2013, December). Clinical best practice guidelines: Assessment and management of pain (3rd ed.). https://rnao.ca/sites/rnao-ca/files/AssessAndManagementOfPain_15_WEB-_FINAL_DEC_2.pdf