Pain Assessment Essay

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The core skill that was involved in the last clinical placement was regarding pain assessment and management. Pain was defined as an unpleasant experience from the sensory and emotional aspects that usually involved the tissue damage in the body (Fields, 2007). Pain was classified into acute or chronic. Acute pain was a direct biological response to inflammation, tissue damage, or disease. Acute pain usually lasted less than one month. Acute pain was usually accompanied by anxiety and emotional distress. Chronic pain comprised of pain that lasted longer than a month following the healing of a tissue injury. Chronic pain persisted or recurred for three months or longer. Chronic pain was either continuous or intermittent (Frey, 2005). Pain …show more content…

These lead to an exact template to carry out pain assessment in patients with acute and chronic pain (Fink, 2000, p.236). Pain management was an interdisciplinary approach, comprised of all interventions that were applicable to ease pain and also to alleviate the cause of the pain (Schonbeck and Uretsky, 2013). The rationale in selecting the core skill , which was pain assessment and management, was due to the importance of pain assessment and management in pain control or relief in every patient’s condition that has to be concerned. A more thorough understanding in the application of pain assessment can produce an effective pain management plan of interventions, and thus regain a patient’s functional ability or quality of life (Wells, Pasero and McCaffery, 2008, pp. 473). Physiotherapists were well-trained with application of pain assessment tools in the clinical settings according to the clinical conditions and target populations, such as young children and elderly with cognitive and communication impairments (Royal College of Physicians, British Geriatrics Society and British Pain Society, 2007, p. …show more content…

Thus, by choosing this topic, a deeper understanding on evidence-based pain assessment and management was pursued.
During pain assessment in the clinical placement, the physiotherapist generally assessed and documented the critical components of pain assessment process by determining location of pain, the aggravating factors and easing factors of pain, duration of pain for every patient with complaint of pain (Powell et al., 2010, p.67). These basic subjective assessments depend on the use of pain measurement tools that assess the intensity of pain in order to quantify the severity and duration of the subjective pain experience in a valid and reliable manner (Powell et al., 2010, p.67). Hence, a pain measurement tool played a vital role in the pain assessment process. That should be selected appropriately regarding the practicality, applicability and acceptability of the pain assessment tools to condition of individual patient and used in conjunction with the other pain assessment (Powell et al., 2010, p. 71). In other words, a pain assessment tool should be selected systematically in order to assess the parameters of pain, which include location and radiation, intensity, quality and pattern,

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