Articles: pain-measurement.
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Background. Although feasible protocols for pain assessment and management in long-term care (LTC) have been developed, these have not been implemented on a large-scale basis. Objective. ⋯ Conclusions. It is feasible to implement regular and systematic pain assessment in LTC. Future research should focus on ensuring effective clinical practices in response to assessment results, and determination of longer-term sustainability.
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Inadequate pain monitoring and management in hospitalized patients poses a serious clinical problem which has been extensively covered in literature for over 25 years. ⋯ The barriers most frequently impeding pain therapy in elderly patients are associated with the healthcare system, and they were more frequently present on the anesthesiology and intensive care ward and in the emergency department, and occurred the least frequently on the surgical ward. Patient-related problems were more frequent on the anesthesiology and intensive care wards than in the emergency department. Doctor-related problems most frequently occurred on the gynecological ward, while nurse-related problems were more frequent on the anesthesiology and intensive care ward.
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Older Australians experience health disparities in pain management compared to other groups. This article is focused on understanding the emergency nurses' perceptions of pain and pain management for older persons with cognitive impairment and presenting with a long bone fracture. This article is part of a larger study focusing on emergency nurses' pain management practices for older Australians with cognitive impairment. ⋯ This study makes clear the challenges clinicians' face in managing pain in older patients presenting to emergency departments. More specifically, older persons with cognitive impairment face substantially greater obstacles in receiving effective pain relief given the lack of any standardised pain assessment screening tool within emergency departments. To improve pain management practices emergency clinicians need to test the utility of behavioural pain assessment tools for cognitively impaired older persons within the emergency context.
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To assess differences in neural mechanosensitivity between patients with chronic nonspecific neck pain with and without neuropathic features (NF and No-NF, respectively). ⋯ The findings of this study suggest that chronic nonspecific neck pain patients with NF have greater neural mechanosensitivity, pain intensity, and neck disability than those with No-NF.
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The assessment of pressure pain threshold (PPT) provides a quantitative value related to the mechanical sensitivity to pain of deep structures. Although excellent reliability of PPT has been reported in numerous anatomical locations, its absolute and relative reliability in the lower back region remains to be determined. Because of the high prevalence of low back pain in the general population and because low back pain is one of the leading causes of disability in industrialized countries, assessing pressure pain thresholds over the low back is particularly of interest. ⋯ Excellent relative and absolute reliabilities were reported for both intra- and inter-session. Reliable measurements can be equally achieved when using the mean of two or three consecutive PPT measurements, as usually proposed in the literature, or with only the first one. Although reliability was almost perfect regardless of the conducted comparison between PPT assessments, our results suggest using two consecutive measurements to obtain higher short term absolute reliability.