Overcoming and Managing Pain
Seniors Can Help Determine How Their Pain is Treated and Alleviated
Federal mandates require medical personnel to ask patients about levels and intensity of pain. Treatment must consider patient input.
Pain is much more than just an unpleasant sensation. Doctors know pain prevents effective recovery from illness or surgery and can have a major negative effect on the quality of life.
Managing or alleviating pain, acute or chronic, has been hit and miss at best. In the past, someone else made decisions about your pain, and didn't necessarily base those decisions on your specific needs or level of pain. New federal standards mandate that hospitals, clinics and nursing homes risk losing their accreditation if they fail to assess patient pain from the moment of admission through discharge - and treat it on an individual basis.
Dr. June H. Dahl, professor of medicine, University of Wisconsin at Madison was one of the key players in setting that standard into practice. Dr. Dahl, who calls herself a soldier in the fight against ineffective pain management, worked on that goal for years.
"Education by itself doesn't change a problem," she said. "You have to get inside the institutions. Linking the new standards to accreditation, to how a facility is judged, does that."
Now, along with blood pressure, heart rate and other vital signs, medical staff asks each patient to evaluate her level of pain. It goes like this - on a scale of zero to ten, with zero being no pain, and ten being pain that would take you to the emergency room right now, describe the pain you are feeling at this moment.
People's tolerance for pain differs widely, so the patient is usually asked to help set goals: on the 0 to 10 scale, where does significant discomfort begin? At what point do you feel you need relief?
"Together," says R.N. Rosemary Davis of Woodstock, IL "Patient and provider work out the exact point at which medication needs to be given in order for it to work before the target level of pain is reached. That gives the patient ownership of his well being."
In many cases, the patient is empowered to provide her own relief through new technologies like a PCA, or patient-controlled-analgesia, a little switch that puts measured amounts of pain reliever into a running IV line.
And pharmaceutical manufacturers, recognizing the emphasis on pain management and intervention over the past few years, have made research in these areas a priority. They've come up with a myriad of medicinal patches, better and safer drugs and more precise delivery systems.
So, doctors, nurses and hospitals include patient input in the treatment plan, and they have an arsenal of 21st Century weapons against pain. Patients now have a responsibility to hold medical staff to those mandates.
