Pain – or disability?

One of the fundamental distinctions we need to make when working with people who experience pain is to understand the difference between experiencing pain – and the behaviour or actions or responses we make to this experience. This is crucial because we can never know “what it is like” to experience pain – and all we have to rely on as external observers is what we see the person doing. Differentiating between the various dimensions associated with our experience of pain makes it far easier to address each part in the distinct ways needed. Let me explain. We know the current definition of pain – an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in such terms (IASP, 1979). One of the key points of this definition was to remove the need for nociception as a requirement for pain to be present. So when we unpack what we understand about pain, the first step is to recognise that it’s an experience. Something we can never share with another person – just like we can’t share joy, the taste of a great craft beer, or what a lover’s touch is like. We therefore have an inexact relationship between two concepts: nociception, or the biological mechanisms at play until the point at which we are conscious of pain; and pain, or the experience of what it is like to have an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described ...
Source: HealthSkills Weblog - Category: Anesthesiology Authors: Tags: Clinical reasoning Cognitive skills Education/CME Pain Pain conditions biopsychosocial disability Research theory Source Type: blogs