Time to Rewrite Assessment and Documentation of Acute Pain in the Emergency Setting
As a subjective and a unique individual experience, acute pain is one of the most common chief
complaints reported by a majority of patients who are admitted to the emergency department
(ED), while its perception and expression have great variations between countries.
Acutely painful conditions are under evaluated and under treated in the ED, suggesting that ED staff need more education and training about the management of acute pain. One
important step in relieving pain is to assess its presence and degree.1
The effective management
of acute pain in the ED requires appropriate assessment of the pain based on the patient’s perception of pain using a validated pain scale. Additionally, reassessment of pain is essential to
determine the effect of treatment
The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) has described pain as ‘an
unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage,
or described in terms of such damage’.
Pain is what the patient states it is. On the other hand, a myriad of psychological, sociocultural, temporal and situational variables affects how people perceive and express their pain.
Age, sex, ethnicity, associated psychiatric problems and socio-economic status of the patient
are some of the factors which affect the magnitude and quality of an individual expresses his/
her complaints. Two decades ago, researchers pointed out that female patients tend to report the
severity of pain higher than males did and therefore received more pain medications. Thus, the
painful experience becomes a unique phenomenon for each patient, thereby necessitating the
use of versatile tools of assessment in the clinical practice
Emerg Med Open J. 2017; 3(2): e1-e3. doi: 10.17140/EMOJ-3-e003
