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Improvement in physician pain perception with using pain scales

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European Journal of Trauma and Emergency Surgery Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Background and aims

Acute pain is the most common reason for visits to the emergency department (ED). The underuse of analgesics occurs in a large proportion of ED patients. The physician’s accurate assessment of patients’ pain is a key element to improved pain management. The purpose of this study was to assess if physicians’ perception of pain can improve with looking at the pain score of the patient marked on VAS.

Study design

This was a single-center, cross-sectional prospective observational study, that took place in an academic ED.

Methods

All adult ED patients presenting with a painful condition were enrolled to the study. In the first phase of the study, the physician rated his/her opinion about the patient’s pain on a 100 mm VAS, in a blinded fashion to the patient’s pain score. In the second phase, the physician rated his/her opinion after looking at the pain scale marked by patient.

Results

587 patients (295, in first and 292, in second phase) were enrolled. The groups were not statistically different for demographic data. The physician’s perception of pain was lower than the patient’s pain score at both phases of the study. Insight of the patient’s pain score on VAS increased the physician’s pain perception significantly (p = 0.03). During the second phase, physicians ordered significantly more analgesic medications to the patients (p = 0.03).

Conclusion

The physicians’ perception of the patients’ pain differs significantly from the pain that the patient is experiencing. VAS helps to bring the physicians impression of pain perception to the level of pain that the patient is actually experiencing and resulted in ordering more analgesics to the patients. Implementation of a pain assessment tool can raise the physician’s perception of the pain and may improve pain management practices and patient satisfaction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Antalya Training and Research Hospital, Emergency Medicine Clinic, Varlık Mh. Kazım Karabekir Cad., 07100, Antalya, Turkey

    Umut Cakir & Mehmet Nuri Bozdemir

  2. Department of Emergency Medicine, Akdeniz University Faculty of Medicine, Dumlupınar Bulvarı, 07059, Antalya, Turkey

    Yildiray Cete & Ozlem Yigit

Authors
  1. Umut Cakir
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  2. Yildiray Cete
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  3. Ozlem Yigit
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  4. Mehmet Nuri Bozdemir
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Correspondence to Ozlem Yigit.

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All authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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They have received no financial support for the research, authorship, and publication of this article.

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Cakir, U., Cete, Y., Yigit, O. et al. Improvement in physician pain perception with using pain scales. Eur J Trauma Emerg Surg 44, 909–915 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00068-017-0882-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00068-017-0882-7

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