Cecile Evans, School of Nursing faculty, presented “A literature review of wound pain assessment tools and methods” at the 38th annual Association of Rehabilitation Nurses meeting, which more than 900 nurses attended.
As wound pain is complicated to asses and may be chronic, acute, or procedural, proper pain assessment is essential to a comprehensive approach to providing pain management. Evans searched for wound pain assessment practices in several databases, including Academic Search Complete, Business Source Complete and WorldCat.org. She then reviewed the top 100 relevant articles that reported wound pain assessment tools and methods before evaluating and organizing the tools and methods.
Evans found that the factors that are unique to wound pain assessment are assessing temporal factors of wound pain associated with procedures, differentiating between acute and chronic pain, wound pain quality, and location of pain with regard to wound features. She found that the relationship of wound pain with function and quality of life should also be evaluated and that rehabilitation nurses may need a comprehensive wound pain assessment.