Pain Management

Pain Management

While you are a patient at the hospital, you may experience discomfort or pain. It may be due to disease, surgery or a procedure. Your health care team will work with you to keep you safe and as comfortable as possible. The following information may help you prepare and understand how we work together to get you back to health.

Communicating Pain

Everyone involved in your care must work together to get your pain under control. Physicians plan and order treatment for pain, nurses carry out and monitor the treatment and you, the patient, must communicate with nurses and physicians when you are experiencing pain and about how your pain management plan is working.

Your physician will make a plan to control your pain and order the type (s) and strength of pain medication that usually works for the kind of pain you are having. It is important that YOU help by talking about your pain in ways that physicians and nurses understand.

• Aching
• Burning
• Constant
• Crushing
• Cramping
• Dull
• Fullness
• Gas-like
• Gnawing
• Heavy
• Hurting
• Intermittent
• Pressure
• Radiating
• Sharp
• Shooting
• Sickening
• Splitting
• Squeezing
• Stabbing
• Tightness
• Throbbing

To more easily tell your caregivers about your pain, patients are asked to use the pain scales. The scales help physicians and nurses measure how well the treatment is working and to adjust the treatment plan if needed.

By using these words and the pain scale, caregivers will understand your pain and know how to better treat it.

Pain Management During Your Hospital Stay and At Home

Patients can help control pain by:

• Talking with your physician or nurse about how much pain to expect
• Telling your physician and nurse how you have best dealt with pain in the past
• Asking about different kinds of medicine or treatments to relieve your pain
• Asking for pain medicine when your pain first begins
• Telling your physician and nurse how much pain you are having using the pain scale
• Telling your physician and nurse if the treatment has helped by using the pain scale
• Telling your physician and nurse about any concerns you have about taking pain medication
• Telling your physician or nurse about any side effects that you may experience like nausea, vomiting, weakness, hard stools (constipation), drowsiness, unsteadiness or dizziness

Other things to help reduce your pain:

Review this list and see what might work for you.

• Deep breathing - Take five deep, slow breaths that fill your chest all the way to your stomach.
• Relaxation - Listen to a book on tape or music, meditation or prayer.
• Distraction - Focus your attention on something else; television, radio, games and talking with others.
• Exercise - If you have had surgery, focus on staying active and getting your body moving.