The estimation of the magnitude of affective descriptors of pain by doctors, nurses and patients of an oncology service: a clinical psychophysics approach

Abstract

The aim of this experimental study was to validate a psychophysical scale of languageperception and to rank the pain intensity associated to each one of the descriptors, verifying its consistency-reliability and inter-subjective agreement among professionals and patients. The research was held at the Clinics Hospital of Ribeirão Preto Medical School, from January to June, 2005, with 41 professionals and 20 patients. The pain descriptors were submitted to the analysis of psychophysical scale methods in a single method of category and magnitude estimation. The pain for the professionals of a Gynecologic Oncology service was referred as pungent, thin and piercing and for the patients, as cutting and burning. On the Pediatric Oncology, the professionals expressed the pain as pungent, thin and burning, while the patients as burning; compressive, persistent and piercing. By Spearman’s correlation (0,713), it was demonstrated that there is a high correlation among the doctors. Concerning to magnitude estimation, a high correlation between doctors and nurses (0,871) was verified. It was evidenced by the study that the correlation analyses suggest that the magnitude of different describers, associated to the displeasure of the pain judged by the patients, differ of those referred by different health professionals.