Pain And Pain: The Leading Cause Of Pain

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The most common reason that people seek medical care is pain, and pain is the leading cause of disability (Peterson & Bredow, 2013, p. 51; National Institute of Health, 2010). Pain is such an important topic in healthcare that the United States congress “identified 2000 to 2010 as the Decade of Pain Control and Research” (Brunner L. S., et al., 2010, p. 231). Unfortunatelly, patients are reporting a small increase in satisfaction with the pain management while in the hospital (Bernhofer, 2011). Pain assessment and treatment can be complex since nurses do not have a tool to quantify it. Pain is considered the fifth vital sign, however, we do not have numbers to guide our interventions. Pain is a subjective experience that cannot be shared easily. …show more content…

Pain can be classified according to duration, etiology, and anatomical area. Also, pain can be classified as physiological and psychological. The physiological definition is the one nurses are more familiar with. Physiological pain is the one that travels using nociceptors and nerves to the brain (Brunner, et al., 2010). However, psychological pain is “a wide range of subjective experiences characterized as an awareness of negative changes in the self and in its functions accompanied by negative feelings” (Meerwijk & Weiss, 2011). This definition is very similar to all that we discuss before because pain has always been associated with unpleasantness. However, the main difference is that the aching is from the psyche or mind (Meerwijk & Weiss, 2011). Psychological pain has gained prominence recently because it is the most cited reason for suicide (Meerwijk & Weiss, …show more content…

Pain definitions across disciplines associate pain with unpleasantness. Physiology link pain with unpleasantness to make humans aware of imbalances in the body. Biology connects pain and unpleasantness as an evolutionary tool. Humans avoid unpleasantness/pain and, that makes them survive. Psychology associate pain with unpleasantness of the mind. Pain is described by all disciples as a subjective experience, which can only be explained by those experiencing it. Pain is linked to illness of the “body”, from a physiologist’s point of view, or the “mind” from a psychologist’s point of

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