Patient-Physician Communication

Effective communication between physicians and patients is crucial to ensure treatment success¹. Unless clinicians do not completely understand their particular patients' condition, an individual pain management is less likely to be implemented.

The experience of pain is individual - some patients may prefer to accept a higher level of pain in return for fewer side effects while others consider analgesia to be of primary importance. Attempting to set arbitrary targets such as "a 30% reduction in pain intensity" as it is done in many clinical trials is not always meaningful in clinical practice. Individual patients have individual treatment targets and expectations, and meeting them is the criterion for effective treatment.

The CHANGE PAIN Advisory Panel has developed a new user-friendly communication tool aimed at assessing pain via a more holistic approach taking into account patient’s expectations on pain relief and quality of life improvement – the CHANGE PAIN Scale.

Reference:
¹ Varrassi G et al. Pharmacological treatment of chronic pain - the need for CHANGE. Cur Med Res Opin, 2010, 26(5): 1231-1245.