The nurse on a postoperative care unit is assessing the quality of the

The nurse on a postoperative care unit is assessing the quality of the client’s pain. In order to ob-tain this specific information about the pain experience from the client, the nurse should ask:

1. “What does your discomfort feel like?”
2. “What activities make the pain worse?”
3. “How much does it hurt on a scale of 0 to 10?”
4. “How much discomfort are you able to tolerate?”

ANSWER

ANS: 1
To determine the quality of the client’s pain the nurse might say, “What does your discomfort feel like?” It is more accurate to have clients describe the pain in their own words whenever pos-sible. Inquiring about what activities make the pain worse is a type of question directed at deter-mining the pain pattern. Having the client rate his or her pain on a pain scale is a method of measuring the intensity of pain. To determine the client’s expectations, the nurse may ask the client, “How much discomfort are you able to tolerate?”