Functional pain scale

Specialties Pain

Published

Hi there,

I am an APRN on the Acute pain service at a major teaching hospital. We are interested in using a functional pain scale for our patients. We are tired of people telling us 10/10 pain while they are smiling and eating their breakfast. Anyone have a validated or unvalidated scale they use in acute care?

Specializes in ED/Critical care, research, pharma.

We use the Adapted Mankoski Pain Scale where a

9 in Unable to speak. Crying out or moaning uncontrollably – near delirium.

and a 10 is Unconscious. Pain makes you pass out.

It's really cute when one of the assistants ask pts. "What is your pain level today?" and when the pt says "9" he says "What, I can't hear you?" and the pt replies "9" and the assistant again says "What, I can't hear you?" and the pt replies "9"... goes on about 3-4 times and then when the assistant shows them the pain scale we use they chose a 4.

Hi there,

I am an APRN on the Acute pain service at a major teaching hospital. We are interested in using a functional pain scale for our patients. We are tired of people telling us 10/10 pain while they are smiling and eating their breakfast. Anyone have a validated or unvalidated scale they use in acute care?

We are presently trying to combine the traditional (useless) 1-10 pain scale in the ED, with some type of Objective information from the nurse. We are considering using the Adult non-verbal pain scale. Our hospital is in process for Magnet Status survey. We feel this would be a great show of our Magnet "mindset" if we tried to come up with something more use-able. However, our management thinks we need to "stay in the box" and just write what the patient says. We presently arrive patients with "10" and discharge them with "10" without any intervention: this tells me the present system has no credibility with healthcare workers. Anyone doing anything like this? Combining subject and objective? And what kind of "evidence" based information are you collecting?

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