Pain Assessment: Model Construction and Analysis of Words Used to Describe Pain-like Experiences

This study was designed to identify and analyse conceptual dimensions underlying the concepts pain, ache and hurt in order to provide a theoretical basis for further development of a methodology for the assessment of pain in clinical practice. The three words, pain, ache and hurt were studied in 1.814 contexts found in a computer based concordance of 7.8 million texts from Swedish newspapers and novels. Separately from the above procedure the words were also located and analysed in a thesaurus of Swedish Bring. In addition to the two above linguistic methods, a questionnaire was given to 106 subjects comprising students, nurses and patients where they were asked to explain the meaning of the words pain, ache and hurt. The main results of the study are as follows: 1. A pain analysis mode has been constructed which can be used for the analysis of pain-like experiences. 2. The concepts pain, ache and hurt are distinguished from each other with regard to causes, the actual pain experience and effects of the pain experience. 3. Expressions typically used to modify the three concepts have been identified and analysed. 4. The concept pain was consistently associated with words of high intensity followed by ache which can be said to have mid intensity. 1 Reprints can be obtained from Fannie Gaston-Johansson, Department of Rehabilitation, Bruna Stråket, Sahlgrenska Hospital, S-413 45 Göteborg, Sweden 2 Department of Linguistics, University of Göteborg, Sweden