Scales for Measuring Pain 

If you've recently been in the hospital or visited an emergency room with severe pain, it's likely the nurses and doctors asked you to rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10 or 1 to 5. Usually, a response of 1 means virtually no pain and 5 (or 10) is the worst pain imaginable. 

Pain scales are used more commonly now as healthcare staff realize how useful they are in helping patients who have pain. In fact, pain scales are particularly helpful in the palliative care environment when the healthcare staff is trying to assess how treatment is working - or not working. 

The Usefulness of Pain Scales 

Pain is very subjective. What is horrendously painful for one person may be annoying to another. This explains why some people can walk around on a broken ankle, while others feel every ache and pain. It's because pain is so subjective that pain scales are useful. 

How Pain Scales Work 

If you have pain, your nurse asks you to rate it on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst pain possible. If you respond it's an 8, quite bad. You are then given some pain medications and after the medication has had time to work, your nurse asks you again what your pain scale is. If you answer "8," then the staff knows that the medication hasn't helped you. If you answer "4," there was some effect from the medication. If you answer "1," then the medication was effective. 

Because you are using numbers instead of descriptions (pain is awful, pain is better, pain is getting worse), every nurse or doctor reports it back the same way, with the number. This gives the whole staff a good reference to work from. 

Pain Scales for Children 

Pain scales can be used by children as well, but in different forms if they're not old enough to understand the number scale. For example, by using a line of faces that range from happy to sad, children can point to the face that best describes how they rate their pain. 

Other scales for children use colors or numbers of objects. Children can show the level of their pain by pointing to a specific color or by having different numbers of objects on a page. For example, one balloon means very little pain and 10 balloons means very severe pain. 

Useful Tools 

Pain scales are useful tools for everyone in the palliative care team and consistent use of them can help keep people at the end-of-life that much more comfortable in their final days. 

Reference: Wong on Web