Pain Scales

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Specializes in Med/Surg, ICU, educator.

I am working on a project for my area manager. We are looking at finding alternative pain scales. The reasoning behind this is that we often chart the pain assessment with one type of pain scale (numerical or self-stated) and reassess with a observed (they've finally fallen asleep from relief of pain and none of us wants to wake them up). Does anyone have any suggestions, as my facility would like to have us chart both the assessment and reassessments with the same scale. Any suggestions would be a definite help!

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Specializes in Med/Surg, Ortho.

I dont know if there is any alternative to pain assessment except it is what the patient says it is. About all you can do is encourage the patient to call for pain medication as needed throughout the night and education about letting pain get out of control. Other than that..

About all that can be measured is how many pain med administrations a patient requests in the night as compared to their waking hours when they verbalize a pain rating.

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also some patients know their pain better then others (ok that sounds kinda wierd but i for instanse know that my pain comes on quickly after my surgeries so I request once I am on oral pain meds that I be woken up when it is time for them because I do not want to wake up to being in agony)

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Specializes in Trauma ICU, MICU/SICU.

Be forewarned. Our hospital got dinged for putting patient sleeping for a pain reassessment. According to JCAHO (for our hospitals cert anyway) pain must be reassessed within 8 hours with the same scale. We have to use the traditional numbered scale and the scale (can't remember the name) for unconcious patients for our head injured etc. patients. That is all they will accept.

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Specializes in med/surg, telemetry, IV therapy, mgmt.
Iowa Geriatric Education Center - these are various pain assessment tools
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