They are in every doctor’s office. They smile and frown at you from the wall, those round little faces that measure pain level.
Formally known as the Baker Pain Rating Scale, each face represents a level of patient pain — no pain (big smile), mild pain, moderate pain, severe pain, worst possible pain (big frown).
The patient (you and me) is asked, “On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the least and 10 the most, what is your current level of pain?”
There is an implication from the very existence of the rating scale and the very asking about the level of pain that — depending how high the pain level — alleviating pain will be the first order of business.
In the last year or so I have been asked my pain level many times at three hospitals and four doctors’ offices. My pain level has varied between 3 and 9.
But even when I replied 9, lessening that pain never was addressed.
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Usually the conversation went like this: “On a scale of 1 to 10 with 1 being the least and 10 the most, what is your current level of pain?”
“9.”
“You know, you really should lose some weight.”
Right then is when I should have asked about pain relief. But like too many of us I’m hesitant to question doctors.
So, I always let the conversation drift to my weight, blood pressure, etc.
And my pain remained.
But my wife — the brains of the outfit — finally asked: “Is there anything you can give him for the pain?”
Of course, the doctor said, and wrote out a prescription.
That was easy. But why did we have to ask? Why isn’t relieving a patient’s pain Job One?
I received a partial answer when I read a story in the New York Times that — for reasons I still can’t fathom — doctors have been reluctant to discuss, let alone treat, patient suffering. Authors writing for medical journals, the story reported, were told to avoid the word “suffering” and write that patients “have” a disease.
The very word “suffering” makes doctors uncomfortable. And that only recently has the medical profession started to confront the issue of how to measure and treat patient suffering.
Asking patients, surveying patients, is a big part of the answer, I read. And the Baker Pain Rating Scale would seem to fit in with this approach.
But only — it seems to me — if there is follow up, if there is action. Don’t ask me if I am in pain unless you’re prepared to do something about it.
I hope I have the fortitude to say this next time I am confronted with the Baker Pain Rating Scale.
But even if I chicken out, you shouldn’t.