The Utility of Pain Scale to Assess Verifiable vs Non- Verifiable Pain in United States Emergency Departments

Introduction: We sought to examine the utility of self-reported pain scale by comparing emergency department (ED) triage pain scores of self-reported but non-verifiable painful conditions with those of verifiable painful conditions using a large, nationally representative sample.Methods: We analyzed the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NHAMCS) 2015. Verifiable painful conditions were identified based on the final diagnoses in the five included International Classification of Diseases 9th revision codes. Non-verifiable painful conditions were identified by the five main reasons for visit. Only adults 18 years of age or older were included. The primary outcome variable was the pain scale from 0 to 10 at triage. We performed descriptive and multivariate analyses to investigate the relationships between the pain scale and whether the painful condition was verifiable, controlling for patient...
Source: Western Journal of Emergency Medicine - Category: Emergency Medicine Source Type: research