Asking the right question may not be enough ... if you do not hear or understand the answer.

摘要

Pain is common. There is not a day that goes by where most providers do not see patients with pain complaints. Most would agree that treating pain is important and is the responsibility of every healthcare provider. Yet, as a whole, we do not do a very good job treating patients with pain. Puzzling? Perhaps ... but maybe not; I think most providers are well intentioned. They want to do the best for their patients. All providers have experienced pain themselves at 1 time in their lives. Who would not want to alleviate pain in their patients? But to treat pain appropriately, 1 has to be aware that the patient is suffering from pain and awareness goes back to what we were taught in medical school... take a good history. Taking a good history is not easy. Most of us learned that taking a good history does not necessarily mean spending hours with the patient. It does require you ask the right question, listen and ask the next right question. This is what I found most interesting about this study by Chen et al. As described, the 101-Multidimenional Affect and Pain Survey is a questionnaire that measures the multiple dimensions of a patient's pain. The authors' conclusions suggest a bias among physicians towards sensory and against affective qualities when eliciting patients' pain experiences. In other words, asking the right question is not enough if you do not understand the answer.