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Determining mild, moderate, and severe pain equivalency across pain-intensity tools in nursing home residents

Katherine R. Jones, RN, PhD, FAAN, et al.

Figure. Numeric Rating Scale (NRS), Verbal Descriptor Scale (VDS), and Faces Pain Scale (FPS).

More than 80% of nursing home residents have chronic pain, and of these, many are not getting adequate treatment. Good pain treatment begins with knowing how severe the pain is. Several different pain-intensity tools are available: one uses a number (0-10) scale, another uses words, and a third shows pictures of people in pain. We asked nursing home residents to rate their pain using all three scales. We wanted to know how the pain reported on one scale translated onto another scale. The 42,000 veterans who live in nursing homes and their families will benefit from this study.


Volume 44 Number 2 2007
Pages 305 — 314

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