A multidimensional way of assessing pain

Aksharananda (Akshar) Rambachan, M.D., argues that provider assessment of pain needs to consider both intensity of pain and how pain impacts the various aspects of a patient’s life, whether that’s mood, activity, sleep, the ability to take care of themselves, or carrying out their usual activities. “There is a more multidimensional way of assessing pain to help target treatment,” he said.

Rambachan, an assistant professor of medicine at the School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, talks about why the numeric scales can lead to gaps in care and why that scale should be paired with validated tools for assessing function, such as the Functional Pain Scale (FPS) and the Defense and Veterans Pain Rating Scale (DVPRS).