Pain Management Essay

The International Association for the study of pain (IASP) taxonomy defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual and potential tissue damage or described in terms such damage”. Pain is classified into two - Acute pain, which is associated with current onset in duration with active damage of tissues. Chronic pain is that has been present for longer duration of time. (Lynch, Griag, Peng 2010).

Pain is an important subjective phenomenon which is recognized universally and is the most often the reason for seeking medical advice. (Ludwig Beymer, 1995).

The primary step to pain management is the process of proper pain assessment. To meet the pain management needs of patients from diverse backgrounds,

Some among these are age, gender, previous operative experiences, culture, a history of substance abuse, and quantity of pain medications taken prior to hospitalization (Bowren, 2008).

Pain is a critical concept that needs to address rigorously while caring for all patients irrespective of the diagnosis and its importance is heightened while taking care of patients from another culture. Culture decides what are the values, beliefs, norms and practices of the individuals and also how they should react to pain (Lovering, 2006). There are studies done which comment that African – Americans have a greater severity of pain perception, while others indicate higher levels in the white population. Majority of people from the western world view germs as the reason for all diseases. However, they also believe there are other reasons behind it like imbalance between the body systems, soul loss, soul theft, possession by spirits, etc., It is the cultural orientation of a person that decides how pain is expressed and what is the level of tolerance, he/she has towards it and at what point do they seek medical attention for it (Helman, 2001; Honeyman & Jacobs, 1996; Ramer et al.,

A person’s culture dictates how he/she expresses their emotions, whether it is happiness, sadness, excitement, depression and sometimes in the current context if they are in physical agony or emotional turmoil. There are resemblances and differences in the experience of pain across the cultures. The people who are from Asia – like the Filipinos, Saudi nationals and also the Irish people tend to be more vocal regarding physical pain. Whereas people from Africa and Tswana portrayed high levels of tolerance to pain. The Filipino communities equally expressed emotional pain well, so were the Irish and Tswanas. On the contrary, the Asians, Africans and Irish were emotionally strong. Furthermore, it showed that cultures denotes the difference of pain perception between people in upper class of society versus to those that are oppressed in life. A generation could also play a major impact on how they respond to physical and emotional pain. A study conducted by Ramer et al magnifies the great relation of pain level and persons ethnicity among Asians. The correlation shows that Hispanic, African American and Anglo Americans tend to have the greatest pain endurance. Likewise, Honeymoon and Jacob (1996) made an investigative review of back pain occurrence among Aboriginal communities. This research leads to the discovery that half of adults in that ethnic