Assessing Pain: A Case Study

The proposed pain assessment system consists of two main stages: 1) face detection and preprocessing and 2) pain expression recognition. We describe each stage in detail below.

What is the point in measuring something that is unique to every individual? In “The Pain Scale,” the author, Eula Biss, attempts to convey her pain to the reader. She tells the reader how she has tried to describe and measure her pain. There is a system set up for doing so, but it leaves much up to individual interpretation. The arbitrary process by which we are supposed to evaluate the level of pain we are experiencing doesn’t seem to accomplish much. Throughout the essay, Biss uses unique ways of comparing the suggested levels of pain to other “scales.” This raises the question, why can the scale, itself, doesn’t do adequate job of helping people understand pain.

Outcome: Consistent pain monitoring and reevaluating. Pain management through opioid medication and non-medication methods. We attempted to use ice packs as pain relief. Patient was unreceptive to the use of pain medication because it did not help his pain. Opioid medication relieved pain for this patient, however pain was consistently rated as 8.

Conceptual analysis is integral in understanding nursing theory. According to Walker and Avant (1995), concept analysis allows nursing scholars to examine the attributes or characteristics of a concept. It can be used to evaluate a nursing theory and allows for examination of concepts for relevance and fit within the theory. The phenomena of pain will be discussed in this paper and how it relates to the comfort theory.

No evidence exists to suggest that older individuals perceive pain to a lesser degree or that sensitivity is diminished. Although pain is a common experience among individuals 65 years of age and older, it is not a normal process of aging. Pain indicates pathology or injury. Pain should never be considered something to tolerate or accept in one's later years.

Mr. Anderson continues to report subjective pain levels that reach an 8 now instead of the over 10 he did have. The decrease in his pain level was with spinal cord stimulator and with the slight decrease of pain medications. He continues to treat for a nonrelated cervical issue and now has added knee pain. He has had 2 prior knee replacements. Mr. Anderson has stopped mentioning a return o work. Dr. Shah has placed him at MMI from a surgical standpoint. He will now solely treat with the pain clinic. Dr. Rampersaud is now planning on changing the pain medication to Nucynta. I have concerns about the medication in regards to Mr. Anderson’s Barrett Disease, and how accurately the medication is monitored and also if there is still a plan to

In conclusion it can be seen that early and regular pain assessment on par with other vital parameters along with appropriate treatment by all healthcare providers will lead to improved patient outcomes and satisfaction. This can be achieved by education, use of departmental guidelines and protocols,regular audit of practice and feedback to the professional involved.

JM is a 32 years old female who was admitted on 02/09/2016 for a planned C-section. As we entered the room, she was lying on her bed talking with her husband in Spanish about her incision pain. Also, she was talking in Spanish with two of her kids that were visiting and sitting on her bed. When the nurse approached her bed, JM preferred to speak in English with her nurse. While I was doing the interview, she spoke to me in Spanish. This patient dominates both languages perfectly. She is Mexican, but grew up in this country.

‘Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage’ (International association for the study of pain 2014). Pain can be made up of complex and subjective experiences. The experience of pain is highly personal and private, and can not be directly observed or measured from one person to the next (Mac Lellan 2006). According to the agency for health care policy and research 1992, an individuals self-report of pain is the most reliable indicator of its presence. This is also supported by Mc Caffery’s definition in 1972, when he said ‘Pain is whatever the experiencing patient says it is, existing whenever he says it does’.

“Playing with Pain,” by Michelle Crouch in December, 2016, teaches us that focusing too much on one sport is not very good. Studies show that specializing in one sport actually has the opposite effect of what people think or say about it. Crouch write in the article about the experiences of Kellen Sillanpaa, a young athlete. The central idea is that if a person specializes in only one sport, there could be consequences. Some of the consequences are having pains, not being able to play a sport or do normal activities, and having a lower chance of success later in life.

Policies and resources are important tools to use for guidance on developing a plan of care for pediatric pain management. Nurses must look at their hospital policies to determine the appropriate actions to take. The Doernbecher Children’s Hospital in Oregon developed a policy using a multi-modal approach for the staff to follow. A multi-modal approach is where pain management is provided before, during, and after all procedures that may cause pain and/or anxiety for the child (Oregon Health & Sciences University, 2012). Team huddles are used before procedures to discuss the appropriate pain management approach that will be used based on the child. The nurse’s report and assessment on the child’s past perceptions of pain, any current symptoms the child is facing, and cultural background are important for other members of the healthcare team to create a proper plan during huddle. If the child’s nurse feels that the child needs more pain interventions, the nurse may stop the procedure to provide the child with additional comfort measures (Oregon Health & Sciences University, 2012). The policy in place at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital is developed in order to provide the child with compassionate care while alleviating pain and anxiety that will decrease any physical or psychological effects caused by untreated pain. All hospitals must have a pain policy in place for guidance on how to provide quality care.

Estimating the intensity of the detected pain might provide better pain assessment and lead to better pain management. Several pain recognition methods were extended to include pain intensity estimation. For example, Gholami et al. \cite{5415598} presented a method to estimate infants’ pain intensity using RVM, which is an extension of SVM (See Table II, 3rd row). RVM is a sparse Bayesian model that provides posterior probabilities (i.e., uncertainty) for class memberships through Bayesian inference. Unlike SVM, RVM classifier outputs the probabilities of the class memberships or labels. Gholami et al. used RVM uncertainty for each class membership to estimate infants’ pain intensity. For validation, RVM posterior probabilities were compared with the results of estimating pain intensity by experts and non-expert observers. The agreement between RVM and human observers, measured using kappa coefficient, was 0.48 for experts and 0.52 for non-experts.

“Imagine there’s No Heaven” is a letter written by Salman Rushdie who is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He is an atheist and is known for his unflinching criticism of religion. Rushdie contributed this letter to a UN-sponsored anthology, addressed to the six-billionth human child who was expected to be born that year. He attempts to discuss and answer two fundamental questions of life. “How did we get here? And, now that we are here, how shall we live?” However he diverts from his central thesis and most of his text malign and smear all religions while the two questions go almost completely unanswered. His tone is demeaning, scornful and he presents religious beliefs as being ridiculous. He makes absolute statements without any

The gold standard for determination of the absence and presence of pain has long been self-report. However, for patients with major cognitive or communicative impairments, it would be better if clinicians could quantify pain without having to rely on the patient’s self-description. Here, we present a newly pain intensity measurement method based on multiple physiological signals, including blood volume pulse (BVP), electrocardiogram (ECG) and skin conductance (SC), all of which are induced by external electrical stimulation. The proposed pain prediction system consists of signal acquisition and preprocessing, feature extraction, feature selection and feature reduction, and three types of pattern classifiers. Feature extraction phase is devised

Assessing pain in the younger population with special needs it could be very daunting. For cognitive challenged children we typically start asking questions to the parents (who are actually reporting the child is having pain) re: how do they suspect pain is present. It is important to mention that pain in non-verbal and /or cognitive compromised children is many times under estimated. Following those questions, we proceed with behavioral observations during the examination/palpation stage looking for signs that help us identify the pain origin and determine needed pain management interventions including proper referrals if the suspected cause is out of our scope of practice. With our cognitive able children, we pursue self -report via questionnaires,