While credibility is often given to those who experience acute, curable pain, chronic pain victims are given no such validity. Women experiencing this pain are subjected not only to difficulties of its chronicity but also to the stigmas of gender in the world of medical diagnosis. Where a man may be viewed as a respected soldier battling his world of chronic pain and a pain that is nothing but valid, a woman will be looked at with disbelief and blame while dealing with the very same pain. Today, women are constantly scrutinized for their over exaggeration of pain. By medical practice standards, women are the majority population induced by opioids for chronic pain based solely on their personal request for such drugs. Medicine in history shows a constant disbelief in women’s pain, but the cold hard truth is that these stigmas are not simply buried in the past. These precedents and skepticisms revolving around women’s chronic pain are still thriving today. When women lack physical or neurological evidence of their pain, evidence shown by a medical test of course, the pain loses almost all validity and becomes an imaginary phenomenon of a woman’s mind. The largest representatives of this “imaginary pain” were often categorized into hysteria, and a multitude of chronic pain diseases today. From the past to present women have not been treated fairly in the diagnosing process of chronic pain. By looking at hysteria, credibility of a patient, gastrointestinal disease, patient treatment, and the ethics of gender in regards to chronic pain, we discover the discrimination that has latched on to women in chronic pain so tightly especially in regards to validity.
Hysteria is one of the oldest prerecorded incidents of discrimination due to...
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In medical school/pharmacology school, medical professionals are taught to treat severe pain with opioids. However, opioids should be prescribed with the possibility of future dependency in mind. Physicians often struggle with whether they should prescribe opioids or seek alternative methodologies. This ethical impasse has led may medical professionals to prescribe opioids out of sympathy, without regard for the possibility of addiction (Clarke). As previously stated, a way to address this is use alternative methods so that physicians will become more acquainted to not not treating pain by means of opioid
Management of pain is very important when it comes to palliative care patients, considering that 55-95% of this patient population requires analgesia for pain relief (Creedon & O’Regan, 2010, p. [ 257]). But what is considered pain management? And why does pain continue to be inadequately treated? According to the article on chronic non-cancer pain in older people: evidence for prescribing, in the past few decades significant improvements have been made to the management of pain in palliative care. However, it is universally acknowledged that pain on a global scale remains inadequately treated because of cultural, attitudinal, educational, legal, and systemic reasons (Creedon & O’Regan, 2010, p. ...
The thought that physicians believe that women have a low pain tolerance is not supported by facts. In the essay “How Doctors Take Women’s Pain Less Seriously,” by Joe Fassler he has a great example of how physicians do believe that many women are not experiencing as much pain as they perceive they are. Men and women are very different and every one had a different pain tolerance and physician should treat every patient as an individual and not make assumptions right away.
Chronic pain is a long term condition, which means it cannot be cured, but the symptoms may be controlled by therapies and medications (Saxon and Lillyman, 2011). When pain is considered chronic, it lasts longer than the expected healing period and there may not be a clear cause (Kraaimaat and Evers, 2003).
" Chronic Pain (CP) statistics astounding according to The Institute of medicine approximately 100 million adults suffer from chronic pain which is more than heart disease, diabetes, and cancer combined."(IOM Relieving Pain in America 2011, p. 1)
Assessing and managing pain is an inevitable part of nursing and the care of patients. Incomplete relief of pain remains prevalent despite years of research due to barriers such as lack of kn...
Currently, I am involved in a prospective cohort study with other colleagues from King Fahad Medical City that aims to study the effect of a low back care educational program on low back pain prevalence among health-care professionals.
Pain is something most people want to get rid of. It would be shocking if a person would want pain or create their own pain. Sounds outrageous, right? The millions of Americans suffering with diseases and conditions, from chronic pain to cancer, all want their pain to simply disappear. But, most people are aware that some treatment options and pharmaceuticals don’t always work. As a result, they are forced to live with their conditions or diseases for long amounts of time, sometimes even leading to their death. Other times, treatment options and pharmaceuticals that don’t medically have any pain-relieving or curing effect do work. In turn, patients who suffered with cancer or post-tooth extraction pain are relieved with nothing but a
In a compare contrast study of clinical chronic pain patients and professional ballerinas, I plan to research the ways in which chronic pain and use of prescribed and illicit drugs (cocaine and opioids) are rationalized, stigmatized, and or given moral value. A side-by-side study of these two drastically unique groups is necessary to identify how particular social factors, and the context of these factors, ascribes particular meaning (good or bad) to chronic pain, drug use, and ultimately the individual attached to either or.
Conclusions. An adequate and clear understanding of the concept of pain and implementing interventions of pain treatment and management is essential in the clinical settings. Understanding the concept of pain is necessary for its relationships with other concepts that are related and similar to the pain experience for theory building. The in the end, understanding the concept of pain will ultimately benefit the patient and lead to better and approp...
Pain, which is defined in its widest sense as an emotion which is the opposite of pleasure (White, 2004, p.455), is one of the major symptoms of cancer, affecting a majority of sufferers at some point during their condition (De Conno & Caraceni, 1996, p.8). The World Health Organization (WHO, 2009, online) suggests that relief from pain may be achieved in more than 90 percent of patients; however, Fitzgibbon and Loeser (2010, p.190) stress that pain may often be undertreated, even in the UK. Foley and Abernathy (2008, p.2759) identify numerous barriers to effective pain management, among which are professional barriers such as inadequate knowledge of pain mechanisms, assessment and management strategies.
The uncertain nature of chronic illness takes many forms, but all are long-term and cannot be cured. The nature of chronic illness raises hesitation. It can disturb anyone, irrespective of demographics or traditions. It fluctuates lives and generates various inquiries for the patient. Chronic illness few clear features involve: long-lasting; can be managed but not cured; impacts quality of life; and contribute to stress. Chronic illnesses can be enigmatic. They often take considerable time to identify, they are imperceptible and often carry a stigma because there is little sympathetic or social support. Many patients receive inconsistent diagnoses at first and treatments deviate on an individual level. Nevertheless, some circumstances require
This piece of work will be based on the pre-assessment process that patients go through on arrival to an endoscopy unit in which I was placed in during my second year studying Adult diploma Nursing. I will explore one patient’s holistic needs, identifying the priorities of care that the patient requires; I will then highlight a particular priority and give a rational behind this. During an admission I completed under the supervision of my mentor I was pre-assessing a 37 year old lady who had arrived to the unit for an upper gastrointestinal endoscopy. During the pre-assessment it was important that a holistic assessment is performed as every patient is an individual with unique care needs as the patient outline in this piece of work has learning disabilities it was imperative to identify any barriers with communication (Nursing standards 2006).
The nurse should educate the patient of the importance of pain control and how controlling pain is essential to a patient’s wellbeing and recovery. It needs to be a balance of what the patient says and what the nurse observes and interprets while always respecting the wishes of the patient. Nurses have a variety of assessment tools available to assess pain in their patients. One dimensional pain scales such as visual analog scale, verbal descriptor scale, numeric pain intensity scale and the combined thermometer scale all measure the intensity of the pain (Jensen, 2011). Other pain scales such as McGill pain questionnaire, brief pain inventory, and brief pain impact questionnaire take into account aspects beyond intensity (Jensen 2011). There are additional pain assessments specialized for children, older adults, patients who are unable to respond, and patients with opioid tolerance (Jensen, 2011). The nurse should be familiar with these methods of pain assessment and know the appropriate use of each. Incorrect medication and treatment choices due to inaccurate or poor pain assessment cause patient suffering (Jensen,
This concept is taken from Block 4, Module 11 which is entitled as ‘Assessment of musculoskeletal system’.