Palliative Nurse: Is there a difference in acute and chronic pain in children? Are they assessed differently?
Acute pain is fairly well understood and easily identified as we have all experienced it at some point in our life. If you think of touching a hot stove with your hand: your autonomic system is activated. Respiratory rate & heart rate increase; you become diaphoretic It serves a purpose: do not touch the hot stove again It has a limited duration: as soon as you take your hand off the stove the healing process begins and natural pain killers are released There are many tested assessment tools for acute pain, the most utilized being the 0-5 or 0-10 scale Chronic pain is less understood and often even experienced health-workers do not fully believe that the pain is as bad as the patient states it is: the autonomic system is not activated as it is with acute pain. Vital signs are often normal as the body has become accustomed to the signals; but this does not mean that the patient is not experiencing extreme pain It does not really serve a purpose other than to remind the patient of a chro
