Pain Assessment Flashcards
PQRSTU pain assessment
Provocative/palliative factors: what makes your pain better or worse?
Quality: use open ended questions like, tell me what your pain feels like.
Region/radiation: show me everywhere your pain is
Severity: use valid pain scale appropriate to patient age, language skills, development level, and comprehension. EX: numerical scale, faces scale, etc
Timing: ask patient how long pain has bee present and how often it occurs. Is it constant, intermittent, continuous, or combination? Does pain increase during specific times of day, with specific activities, or ins specific locations?
Pain affecting U - regarding ADLs, work, relationships, enjoyment of life
Cold Application
Immediately after direct trauma such as sprain, strain, fracture, muscle spasm; after superficial lacerations or puncture wounds, after minor burns, chronic pain from arthritis, joint trauma, delayed onset muscle soreness, inflammation
Precautions: circulatory insufficiency, cold allergy, diabetes
Heat Application
Informed or edema body part; new surgical wound; infected wound, arthritis; degenerative joint disease; localized joint pain; muscle pain; muscle strain; low back pain; menstrual cramping; hemorrhoid; perinatal and vaginal inflammation; local abscess
Precautions; pregnancy, laminectomy sites, spinal cord, malignancy, vascular insufficiency, eyes, testes, heart
