Why Is Measuring Pain Such a Painful Task?
Pain is the number one reason people visit their doctor. Pain can be a nuisance, it can be debilitating, it can be life-threatening. There is a whole set of adjectives to describe different pain sensations and a whole set of self-report tests for measuring it. Pain is considered one of the vital signs doctors and nurses check, and yet it is the only one that can’t be objectively measured. Instead, we rely on self-reports and questionnaires to accurately convey the information we need to get across.
Pain itself is a sensation, and each one of us experiences it differently. We all have different thresholds and different reactions — it is a very personal experience. And how do we describe something to someone that has not felt it themselves? I recently tried describing menstrual cramps, or at least what I thought were menstrual cramps, to a female friend and discovered that what I’ve been experiencing my whole life is actually very different from what she feels. And yet, we both describe our (very different) pain as being cramps. When filling out self-report measures such as the McGill Pain Questionnaire (MPQ), being able to relay these differences is crucial to diagnosing, treating, and curing different painful sensations.
Without being able to feel exactly what it is another person is feeling, these tests become vital in determining what’s going on and what we can do to help alleviate their pain. While there are many individual differences in experiencing pain, ranging from the threshold to the sensation to the amount, being able to measure it is paramount. While self-report testing has its drawbacks, visual analog scales and questionnaires such as the MPQ provide a basis for determining pain levels in people and patients. Funnily enough, the most often response by a patient when asked to rate their pain on a 1–10 scale is 11, which does not help practitioners in determining objective pain ratings at all. Visual analog scales equip practitioners with a more “objective” and easily comparable rating of a patient’s pain levels. This allows practitioners to compare pain ratings between patients and even over time with the same patient.
While self-report measures do nothing to address the subjectivity of the pain experience, they do allow for continued comparison and observation. This in turn enables practitioners to compare treatments and alleviate patients’ pain. In the end, these self-report measures don’t really tell us much about the person’s individual pain experience, but they do allow us to treat it easier, and for now that will have to be enough.
