Can I combine acute pain and chronic pain into one nursing diagnosis for a care plan?

[ClaraRedheart, BSN, RN]

Or should they be separate? The patient that I am doing my care plan on is in recovery for recent abdominal surgery, has an NG tube in place that backed up and caused acute throat pain, she is also recovering from a knee replacement surgery that happened about a month prior. Can I combine all of the "pain" diagnoses into a single nursing diagnosis? Or should each pain diagnosis be separate?

Thanks!

[llg, PhD, RN]

I would definitely separate them. They are different phenomena ... have different causes ... will be assessed differently ...will require different interventions ... and will require separate evaluation criteria and goals. It would be easier for you to separate them as you will need to think about each source of pain separately.

[Esme12, ASN, BSN, RN]

I agree separate them. They have different causes, different interventions, different outcomes.

[ClaraRedheart, BSN, RN]

Thanks for the quick responses! I really appreciate it! Still kind of new at the care plan thing. Practice makes perfect I guess :-)

[CT Pixie, BSN, RN]

Funny you ask this, I JUST handed in a care plan that included both Pain-Chronic and Pain-Acute. One was for acute pain d/t abdominal surgery, the chronic was for osteoarthrisis and knee issues.

Like the others said, different interventions, different goals, different outcomes.

My professor also noted that she was surpised (in a good way) and happy that I put both but did them as seperate care plans.