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Health

How to Accurately Describe Your Pain

Pain tolerance differs between patients; where one person might feel mild pain, another may feel moderate pain. While describing pain might be difficult, there are a few things that can be done to help describe the pain you are feeling more accurately.

Show Where You Are Feeling Pain

When showing where pain is located, it is important to be as specific as possible. Telling a medical professional that you have leg pain is not enough; it is too broad and doesn’t help when it comes to diagnosing a medical issue. It is better to point out where exactly the pain is as this will help to rule out any other conditions that are not associated with pain in that specific area. Doctors at a pain management clinic, like those at Utah based KindlyMD, would use this information to give a more accurate diagnosis.

Use the Pain Scale

The pain scale is a helpful way to try to describe pain to a medical professional. The scale ranges from 0-10, with 0 being pain free and 10 being the most unbearable pain experienced. Levels 1 to 3 are classed as manageable pain, meaning the pain is noticeable but does not hinder everyday life. Moderate pain is identified by levels 4 to 6, which means the pain is strong enough to affect daily tasks and cause some issues. Levels 7 to 10 are classed as severe pain, which dominates life and makes every day extremely difficult. Using the pain scale helps medical professionals easily understand the type of pain being felt and therefore help to develop a treatment plan for the pain.

Journalling Pain

Keeping a journal of the pain is a useful way to help doctors diagnose any medical problems. If this pain has been felt for a prolonged time, write down the symptoms and when they are present. Additionally, write down anything that has been done to relieve said symptoms and if this has helped to soothe the pain. By journalling all these different things, doctors and other medical professionals will be able to easily figure out what these symptoms mean as well as how to treat them.

Descriptive Words

Although patients can show exactly where their pain is being felt, there may be a number of different medical issues associated with that part of the body. Using descriptive words helps medical professionals to show the type of pain being experienced by the patient. They provide a more accurate picture and allows different types of pain to be linked to specific medical issues. Words like stabbing, burning, tender, sore, sharp, and aching can all be used to paint a picture of the exact type of pain being felt by the patient. This can help to differentiate the possible injuries or issues that the patient may be experiencing.

Conclusion

In summary, pain can be described in various ways to help diagnose medical issues. Pointing out an exact location of the pain helps to begin the process of narrowing down medical issues associated with that area. Using the pain scale helps to describe the severity of the pain being experienced by the patient, and descriptive words further aid in describing the type of pain. Journalling the pain over a period of time helps doctors to notice any patterns and other symptoms being experienced by the patient to help in diagnosing a medical issue.

This will help physicians to get a more accurate picture of how you are feeling. However, because everyone feels pain in a different way and some people are more sensitive to pain than others, it is not an exact science.

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