Description
NUR 2392 / NUR2392 Final Exam: Multidimensional Care II / MDC 2 Final Exam Review (Latest 2024/2025) Rasmussen
Assessment and Care of Patients with Pain
Concepts
• The priority concept in this chapter is comfort
• The interrelated concepts in this chapter are cognition sensory Perception
Pain The Scope of the Problem
• Pain is a major economic problem and a leading cause of disability that changes the lives
of many people, especially older adults.
• Chronic non-cancer pain such as osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and diabetic
neuropathy is the most common cause of long-term disability, affecting millions of
Americans and others throughout the world.
• Universal, complex personal experience
• Is an impairment in comfort; major economic concern; leading cause of disability
• Failure to manage pain is a worldwide health problem
• Inter-professional pain initiatives help patients receive best treatment
Definitions of Pain
• Unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue
damage
• Whatever person experiencing it says it is; exists whenever person says it does
• Self-report always most reliable indication of pain
Categorization of Pain by Duration
• Acute pain
- Short-lived
- Results from sudden, accidental trauma; surgery; ischemia; acute inflammation
• Chronic (persistent) pain
- Can last a person‘s lifetime
- Chronic cancer pain
- Chronic non-cancer pain
• Pain is treated inadequately in almost all health care settings.
• Populations at the highest risk in medical-surgical nursing are older adults, patients with
substance use disorder, and those whose primary language differs from that of the health
care professional.
• Older adults in nursing homes are at especially high risk because many residents are unable
to report their pain. In addition, there often is a lack of staff members who have been
educated to manage pain in the older-adult population.