Pain Sensory Tool Is an

¶ … Pain Sensory Tool is an instrument that is used to measure pain in children. The Pain Sensory Tool assesses three dimensions of children's pain: location, intensity and quality. The Pain Sensory Tool uses a 10 cm word graphic rating scale or a visual analogue scale to measure pain intensity. Pain intensity is represented by Chinese characters indicating degrees of pain, from pain-free to severe pain. In addition to the Chinese characters, degrees of pain are represented by a smiling face and a crying face.

The Pain Sensory Tool is administered by the healthcare provider, who shows it to the patient and asks the patient to indicate where, on the graph, his or her pain would be located. To do so, the patient makes a mark on the graph. The Pain Sensory Tool is scored by measuring a patient's indicated pain intensity. Higher scores indicate greater pain.

In addition to determining a patient's current perception of pain, the Pain Sensory Tool can also measure background pain, procedural pain, overall pain, pain expectation, pain acceptance, and prior pain experiences. The Pain Sensory Tool has been shown to exhibit some reliability. When patients are asked to re-rate a previously rated prior experience of pain, they indicate the same pain rating. Therefore, the Pain Sensory Tool appears to have test-retest reliability. The reliability coefficient for test-retesting is.96 (Cheng, Hester, Foster, and Wang, 2003).

The Pain Sensory Tool was compared with the Poker Chip Tool in order to determine the validity of the Pain Sensory Tool. The results were that the Pain Sensory Tool and the Poker Chip Tool demonstrated convergent validity. The validity coefficient ranged from.79 to.88 across pain intensity variables (Cheng, Hester, Foster and Wang, 2003). Therefore, use of the Pain Sensory tool was supported. The Pain Sensory Tool has several benefits. For example, patients can choose several levels of pain, including pain-free.

Patients can mark on the paper to indicate degree of pain, and they can choose their own increments of pain along the scale. There are graphics as well as characters on the scale, making it easier for younger patients to use the scale. In addition, the Pain Sensory Tool appears to be more accurate than other tests, such as the Poker Chip Tool. However, the Pain Sensory Tool does have drawbacks. Some patients may not know how to mark their pain on the Tool.

Younger children had a difficult time understanding the instrument, which requires greater work by the healthcare provider to use the tool as a means for assessing and treating pain. In addition, younger children may be unable to understand a visual analogue scale. Furthermore, while more accurate than the Poker Chip Tool, the Pain Sensory Tool is not that accurate.

The Pain Sensory Tool seems like a well-designed instrument, as long as it is used as part of a healthcare provider's means of determining how much pain is being experienced by a patient. However, because the Pain Sensory Tool is targeted at younger patients, a provider must constantly be aware of the dangers that the patient will not understand a particular instrument, which would result.