Understanding Pain
Understand the nature of pain, how it’s treated, how to ensure proper treatment, and know your rights as a patient with pain.
Understanding Pain
Key Terms in Pain Management
This helpful glossary will familiarize you with the most commonly used terms associated with pain and pain management, and can prove especially helpful when you are communicating with healthcare professionals.
The Two Faces of Pain: Acute and Chronic
It is helpful to tell the difference between the two basic types of pain: acute (short term) and chronic (long term). Generally speaking, acute pain results from disease, inflammation, or injury to tissues. Chronic pain is widely believed to represent disease itself. Also included here is a thorough listing of virtually every type of pain and what distinguishes it from other types/sources of pain.
Pain and Integrative Medicine
If you or a loved one suffers from chronic pain, integrative medicine can be a very effective approach to pain management. Integrative medicine combines the concepts of mind, body, spirit, and community and supports the theory of healing rather than attempting to cure an illness. You’ll find brief descriptions of various integrative therapies, including yoga, chiropractic, biofeedback, acupuncture, meditation, and more.
Patients' Right to Palliative Care
As a patient, you have the right to appropriate treatment and care that will relieve your pain. The list here represents steps that you or your caregiver can take when pain is uncontrolled, from speaking with the assigned nurse, or the head nurse of the unit, to filing a complaint with the hospital director’s office.
Pain Care Bill of Rights
Here are the basic rights of a person managing pain, as developed by the American Pain Foundation. These rights include the right to have your pain assessed thoroughly and treated promptly, the right to participate actively in decisions about how to manage your pain, and the right to be referred to a pain specialist if your pain persists. A link to the American Pain Foundation is provided.
Caregiver Corner
Pain creates many challenges not only for the people who suffer from it...
Caregiver Cornerstones Brochure
