Depressed

Re: Depressed

• DominoThunderball member

  January 2014

  Hi @Janda426 - I am in healthcare too, so I know what you are talking about with respect to how some patients will calmly tell you their pain is a 10 out of 10.  Then you have to decide how you should go about controlling that pain - do you give someone a PCA of morphine who has sprained their wrist?  No, of course not.  However, you could have a patient in a lot of pain who is stoic, so you have to be careful of that.  Do their vital signs say that they are actually in a lot of pain even though their face and their demeanor may not be showing it?  Does the patient have a history of drug seeking behvaior? These are all things to take into consideration.  I admitted in my prior posting that today I probably wouldn't have said my broken arm was a 10 out of 10, however, when I was 12 this is how I felt.  Would you tell a 12 year old patient who rated her broken arm pain as a 10 out of 10 that she shouldn't feel that way because the patient in the room next to her has it much worse? 

  
  

  As an adult I can realize that out of all the pain in the world, my broken arm at 12 years old was not truly a 10 out of 10.  That was my conceptualization of it at the time, however.  Does that make sense?  Again, I was just using my personal story as a concrete anecdote to explain a concept that was kind of abstract.  Perhaps it was a shitty example.  I apologize.

  
  

  I'm in an APN (nurse pracitioner) program currently and my track is in adult/gerontology, but in my RN program they engrained into us the concept of the subjectivity of pain.  In your program, is that not the case?  I noted you said you don't buy into the subjectivity of pain.  I'm just wondering if the RN curriculum has started to change.  Pain is such a complicated topic so it wouldn't surprise me if the curriculum on addressing pain mangement is also changing.

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• ngolimento member

  January 2014

  I don't have much to add to the original topic (drama blah blah random stranger being judgey, blah whatever).
  
  However, on the subjectivity of pain: I was amazed by the data collected by a Mythbusters episode on this. They found that pain IS subjective, and that rating scale slides wildly even in one person. For example, their test subjects would have almost double pain edurance if allowed to swear vs sitting quietly. That blew me away. Oh yeah, and women are totally less sissypants than men about pain .

  

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• DominoThunderball member

  January 2014

  @peledreamsofrain - I know what you mean re: men being sissypants.  When my husband is sick enough to have a fever you would think he's dying.  Women do much better with it.

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• DominoThunderball member

  January 2014

  This is another great example of the experience of  stress and what it does to the body and how you need to meet people where they are at and recognize what they are doing might be the hardest thing they have ever done. It's a good overall message too

  
  

  https://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/Coming-Out-of-Your-Closet-Ash-B
  

  
  

  I think it gets really good around 3:20 (if you want to ffwd).

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