Bliss by Harry Bliss for February 06, 2020

8

For this panel, a number 10 !!!

this kind of question is a real pain…

14.

Ouch! Now that realy hurts!

9.9 :-P

Do we get to hold up the number cards like Judges at a sporting event ?

Being asked to apply numbers to things which one is unable to count or measure is an annoyance. I’ll give it a frowning face.

I think 6 faces covers the whole range. The ones without eyebrows though, they’re a little too minimalist.

May I suggest color from flesh to green and ending with red.

2π

The whole pain rating system is meaningless. The studies that showed people could rate pain had the subjects comparing to a standard pain like what it feels like to have your hand submerged in ice water for x minutes. It’s just stoopid to expect random people to rate pain reliably when there is no standard.

From 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst and 1 also being the worst, I’d give it a 7.

I would be a very rich woman if I had a dollar for every time I triaged someone who appeared very calm, had perfectly stable vital signs, and described their pain as a 10, or the ones who were doubled over, obviously very, very distressed, elevated vitals, and described their pain as a 2.

i’ve heard more than one doctor or P.A. say that one should always say 9 or 10.

Not unlike cold-call polling: any data collected on a 1-10 scale is meaningless.

In 2001 JCAHO mandated that all patients be asked to rate their pain level when they came in to a providers office. One of the most disastrous requirements in modern medical history, as it directly sparked and fueled the Opioid crisis we face today.

From my perspective and from the comments, I have two different things I hope to contribute:

1. My belief is that the humorous aspect of the comic today is meant to be the fact that the faces of the pain model are all Caucasian and very truthfully should best be something else. The idea of the scale using faces of non-skin tone colors is quite common place today and when it is a sliding scale from green (low/no pain) to red (a lot of pain) it can often further assist in assessment.

2. In regards to the usefulness of the scale itself….. yes, of course there are a wide array of variances in how people perceive pain and how they report pain. But, the scale itself is useful as a relative assessment tool for clinicians.

That chart (and most doctors I’ve been to) forget a key factor: Pain is entirely subjective.

Depends on the pain, or perhaps the cause.