pain
management online journals
The formal assessment of
pain is important to initiate and evaluate the effectiveness of
pain treatments. Assessment subjectivity is reduced by using an assessment tool. Two types of
pain assessment tools are available, ‘self-report’ and ‘observational or behavioural’ for people who cannot self-report. A number of behavioural
pain assessment tools have been devised for people who can’t self-report
pain i.e. critical care patients and people with dementia. For example the Critical Care
Pain Observation
Tool [CPOT], was devised using 105
Intensive Care patients. It consists of four items and scores range from 0-8. There are a number of observational
pain assessment tools available to assist clinicians to recognise and assess
pain that were not used in clinical practice according to the nurses completing the survey. There is a need to identify which of these assessment tools is appropriate for individual organisations and to increase their use in everyday clinical practice. Julie Gregory, The Use of
Pain Assessment Tools in Clinical Practice:
Relevant Topics in Neuroscience & Psychology