Get Georgia Pain Management 2012-2024

Assessment and documenting pain is needed in order to improve management of pain.

Whether your pain is acute (sudden and severe) or chronic (persistent or recurrent), communicating your experience of pain can help your healthcare provider prescribe the best possible treatments for your type and level of pain.

Through a pain management plan, healthcare providers help people manage all kinds of pain. Pain management approaches include medications, injections, therapy and exercise. Your provider may recommend one approach or a combination of several.

A patient's statement, “I have pain,” is not descriptive enough to inform a health care professional about pain type. Asking patients to describe their pain using words will guide clinicians to the appropriate interventions for specific pain types. Patients may have more than 1 type of pain.

Six Tips to Documenting Patient Pain Tip 1: Document the SEVERITY level of pain. ... Tip 2: Document what causes VARIABILITY of pain. ... Tip 3: Document the MOVEMENTS of the patient at pain onset. ... Tip 4: Document the LOCATION of pain. ... Tip 5: Document the TIME of pain onset. ... Tip 6: Document your EVALUATION of the pain site.

Good documentation improves communication among clinicians about the current status of the patient's pain and responses to the plan of care. Documentation is also used as a means of monitoring the quality of pain management within the institution.

Improved quality of life: Pain management is the key to good quality of life. Managing pain can reduce stress, blood pressure, and heart rate, and positively affect healing. Pain involves cognitive, motivational, affective, behavioral, and physical components impacting the quality of life.