Pain is one of the most common symptoms in palliative care. The aim of palliative care is to allow patients to be pain-free or for their pain to be sufficiently controlled that it does not interfere with their ability to function or detract from their quality of life. In palliative care, the treatment of pain needs to be part of a holistic and multidisciplinary approach to patient care.
☛ Pain can cause or aggravate problems related to other causes of suffering and the pain has to be controlled before the other problems can be addressed and treated.
↳ It is not possible to have meaningful discussions about psychosocial concerns if a patient has uncontrolled pain.
☛ Pain can be caused or aggravated by psychosocial concerns, which must be addressed before good pain control can be achieved.
↳ Where psychosocial or spiritual problems are causing or aggravating pain, no amount of well-prescribed analgesia will relieve the pain until the responsible psychosocial issues are identified and addressed.
Good pain control requires
☛ accurate and detailed assessment of each pain
☛ knowledge of the different types of pains
☛ a different therapeutic approach to chronic pain
☛ knowledge of which treatment modalities to use
☛ knowledge of the actions, adverse effects and pharmacology of analgesics
☛ assessment and treatment of other aspects of suffering that may aggravate pain
↳ physical, psychological, social, cultural, spiritual
☛ fundamental to this is the availability of opioid analgesics
↳
Source:
The IAHPC Manual of Palliative Care 3rd Edition
https://web.archive.org/web/20210122105526/https://hospicecare.com/uploads/2013/9/The%20IAHPC%20Manual%20of%20Palliative%20Care%203e.pdf
