3.) Pain Management: New Expectations for Pain Assessment and Treatment

From: Helen Dynda (olddad66@runestone.net)
Fri May 4 12:21:21 2001


Leadership Summit on Pain Management: New Expectations for Pain Assessment and Treatment

(Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois - July 31, 2000) Millions of Americans suffer needlessly due to inadequate knowledge and inappropriate attitudes about pain, according to experts at a groundbreaking conference on pain management.

Health care leaders from prestigious institutions such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and University of Wisconsin Medical School gathered today in Los Angeles to support dramatic steps that can mean the difference between incapacitating pain and a normal, productive life.

The Leadership Summit on Pain Management: New Expectations for Pain Assessment and Treatment attracted hundreds of health care leaders from across the country. The summit was co-sponsored by Joint Commission Resources, a subsidiary of the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, and the American Pain Society.

Pain patient Susan Wolf, who has suffered from rheumatoid arthritis for more than 20 years, stressed the profound impact of unrelieved pain. The North Carolina woman's pain left her unable to perform even the most basic daily activities, such as getting out of bed and taking care of her home and family, and ended her career in advertising.

"I lost several jobs, causing my family financial difficulty that was furthermore complicated by the thousands of dollars I had to spend on out-of-pocket medical bills," Wolf told conference participants.

Wolf, along with experts in the areas of acute care, home care and long term care, emphasized that excessive concerns about addiction and the side effects of pain medicines often result in reluctance to prescribe appropriate analgesics with the consequence that patients suffer needlessly from pain.

New standards developed by the Joint Commission are expected to have a dramatic, positive impact on the estimated more than 120 million Americans who suffer from pain. These evidence-based pain management standards require nearly 18,000 accredited health care facilities to make pain management an integral part of all treatment plans. Health care facilities must:

* recognize the right of patients to appropriate assessment and management of pain;

* identify pain in patients during their initial assessment and, where required, during ongoing, periodic re-assessments; and

* educate patients and their families about pain management.

http://www.jcaho.org/news/nb280.html


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