assessment tools

[Fruit Sucker]

I recently read about CPOT (Critical Care Pain Observation Tool) on another thread and thought it was a really neat thing to have. I just graduated school last month and would like to know if others have any tools like this that they find helpful.

Also, when you document pain assessment in this way, what do you put? "Pt 2/8 on CPOT pain scale"? There is still a lot I need to learn about proper documentation.

[VANurse2010]

We use it where I work. It's nice, but really only appropriate for sedated patients - sometimes nonverbal patients. It really does fly in the face of the "all pain is subjective" mantra, because someone with chronic pain playing on their iPhone would never trigger it.