For every patient in pain you are expected to ask them to rate their pain on a scale of 1-10. It's annoying because it's completely subjective and I have yet to meet a patient who understands this scale. Yet we still are forced to ask them, and to record it.
As far as I'm concerned, a 10/10 pain is excruciating. It means you should be screaming in nonstop agony. A 10 would be like having your arm ripped off or someone stabbing you over and over and over. You can't be asleep and in 10/10 pain. If you have 10/10 pain, you better be screaming. Or at least moaning...even a LITTLE. I get that your pain hurts a whole lot. Give it a 7 or 8. Or hell, even a 9. But it's always 10. Always.
I walk in the room of a patient who I already had a feeling was going to be annoying so I guess I had a bias. He was sleeping so I woke him up. He said he had horrible pain in his leg. I asked him to rate the pain out of 10 and prefaced it, as I always do for the hope that maybe one day a patient will understand, "...with 10 being the most horrendous, awful, terrible pain you can think of." And of course, he was a 10.
Later when we went in to see him he was watching TV with his hand behind his head, lounging in the bed and when asked the question again he drowsily looked up at us and said., "What? Yeah it's a 10."
That annoys me to no end! I normally document the patient's response of 10/10 and then describe the patient at that time. Anyone who reads it will see the load of BS.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely. "Patient appears calm and in no apparent distress. Patient rates pain as 10/10"
DeleteI will also document current VS just to show that the patient is not tachypneic, tachycardic or hypertensive. It helps paint the picture.
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