title: Pain assessment instruments for use in the emergency department.
abstract: Each patient's pain experience is uniquely his or her own. Standardized pain assessment methodologies and procedures provide a window to this experience and constitute a necessary first step to our understanding of pain, in both clinical and research settings. All too often, emergency department pain assessment is cursory--performed more to satisfy regulatory requirements than to guide our therapies or evaluate our practices. This article provides information on a number of assessment techniques that are appropriate for clinical and research use. Their use should inform our practice and lead to continuous improvements in our management of pain.
authors.affiliation: Department of Emergency Medicine, Pain and Emergency Medicine Institute, Beth Israel Medical Center, First Avenue at 16th Street, New York, NY 10003, USA. ktodd@bethisraelny.org
authors.forename: Knox H
authors.initials: KH
authors.lastname: Todd
mesh_terms: D004635:Emergency Medicine / Q000379:methods*; D004636:Emergency Service, Hospital; D006801:Humans; D009656:North America; D010146:Pain / Q000145:classification* / Q000175:diagnosis*; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000295:instrumentation* / Q000379:methods; D015203:Reproducibility of Results