Pain In My Ass Scale Charting For Nurses Explained

Neither medicine nor nursing is practiced at the bedside anymore.  Charting has consumed our professions.  Charting is the act of writing and documenting patient care details. Do you want to know where your doctor or nurse is?  More than likely, they have their heads buried in a computer somewhere far away from your every need. You're having pain, you say?  Your call light is going unaswered, you say?  Don't worry, your nurse is probably at the computer down the hall charting your Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale.  If you've ever been admitted to a hospital, I'm sure you've seen these cartoon-like facial images depicting pain and a number associated with that level of pain.  The scale offers a number from 0-10 with zero indicating no pain and ten meaning "hurts worst".  For the general public, please note the scale ends at ten.  If you say you have 12/10 pain, your electronic charting will spit out a value of not acceptable (N/A).  Nurses have been instructed to treat N/A as 0/10 pain. I'm sorry Mrs Wong and or whomever you are.  Your pain scale is irrelevant into today's excessive charting environment.  Nurses just don't have time to care about answering their patient's call light in a reasonable amount of time.  They don't have time to provide bedside pain scale evaluations that your organization is so proud of.  They are  too busy trying to figure out the newest change of the week in their ...
Source: The Happy Hospitalist - Category: Internists and Doctors of Medicine Authors: Source Type: blogs