The General Survey and HEENT Essay Example

Acute pain can be described as the abrupt inception and is often the outcome of a known cause of such harm. Acute pain usually resolves with the mending of its original cause. On the other hand, chronic pain usually continues for weeks or months it is often related to the original condition, for example, arthritis. The nature of these pain can be placid, moderate, or harsh. Providing optimal patient care require physicians to have the necessary knowledge and skills regarding pain assessment and control. Different factors must be considered when assessing both chronic and acute pain. While evaluating acute pain, the nurse should focus on the location and the description of the pain and whether the pain is a primary or secondary complaint relating to other illness. The nurse should consider the symptoms of the pain which can assist in determining the underlying cause and thus determining the necessity of symptom management. The effect of the pain and type of medication should also be considered during the assessment of acute pain (Bickley, 2013).

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On the other hand, while assessing chronic pain, a physician should consider the cause of the pain which might be trauma or insidious. It is also important to know the period that the patient has experienced the pain and the location of the pain (Voscopoulos & Lema, 2010). The doctor should know whether any movement makes the pain worse or the kind of weather condition that worsen the pain. Besides, the level of pain must be considered, and the use of an assessment scale can obtain this. The pattern to grief when the patient wakes up in the morning should be kept in mind and whether the pain increases or not.

I once assessed a patient with acute cancer-related pain where the pain was because of diagnosis and therapy, for example, radiation therapy. I was able to describe the nature of the pain by the use of quality descriptors such as throbbing. I was also able to observe various symptoms of neuropathic pain as well as illustrations, for example, allodynia and shooting. Since the pain was as a result of cancer, I was obliged to determine the intensity of the pain when the patient is a different position such as resting, walking and other factors which tend to worsen or relieve pain (Voscopoulos & Lema, 2010). I also focused on physical review, examination of the disability-related with the pain and psychological assessment such as anxiety.

Factors that I would have improved upon include mainly were related to the reliability of pain assessment techniques which focus on the persistent outcomes when conducted under the same condition. I would also have improved on the validity of these techniques such that the measure should not only have focused on pain but also other quantity, for example, anxiety as this was a huge issue in the assessment techniques that evaluate character because the response of the patient was minimum.

The pain had a significant impact on the patient such that the patient especially in the morning when the patient wakes up and during the analgesic drug therapy. There are specific treatments that could have reduced the impact of pain on the patient. One way was to eradicate the source of the pain via surgery or radiation(Bickley, 2013). Another therapy could have been pain medication which manages pain, and such medications include over-the-counter and other prescription, for example, aspirin and ibuprofen.

References

Bickley, L. S. (2013). Bate's guide to physical examination and history taking (11th). Philadelphia, PA: Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Voscopoulos, C., & Lema, M. (2010). When does acute pain become chronic?. British journal of anaesthesia, 105(suppl_1), i69-i85.