The Common Sense Guide to Improving Palliative Care > Preventing, Assessing, and Treating Pain > 4.10 Tools and Resources

This extract from the online edition of The Common Sense Guide to Improving Palliative Care is used with permission.

Tools and Resources

What Are the Best Tools That I Can Use to Assess My Patients' Pain?

• Wong/Baker FACES Scale (detailed information on how to use the FACES Scale is available along with the downloads) http://www3.us.elsevierhealth.com/WOW/faces.html



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Figure 4.2. Wong-Baker FACES Pain Scale. From Hockenberry, J. J., Wilson, D., & Winkelstein, M. L. (2005). Wong's Essentials of Pediatric Nursing (7th ed., p. 1259). St. Louis: Elsevier. Used with permission.

• Pain Assessment in Advanced Dementia (PAINAD) (five-item observational tool for caregivers) http://mqa.dhs.state.tx.us/QMWeb/Pain/PAINAD.htm
• Edmonton Symptom Assessment System (ESAS) (tool to assess nine symptoms in cancer patients) http://www.palliative.org/PC/ClinicalInfo/AssessmentTools/esas.pdf
• Assessing Pain in Persons with Dementia http://www.hartfordign.org/publications/trythis/assessingPain.pdf

What Are Some Good Web Sites Where I Can Find Pain Resources?

• City of Hope Pain/Palliative Care Resource Center http://mayday.coh.org
• Beth Israel Medical Center, Department of Pain Medicine and Palliative Care http://www.stoppain.org
• ICU Delirium and Cognitive Impairment Study Group: Brain Dysfunction in Critically Ill Patients http://www.icudelirium.org/delirium
• National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine http://www.nccam.nih.gov