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Do health care professionals underestimate severe pain more often than mild pain? Statistical pitfalls using a data simulation model
Author(s) -
Idvall Ewa,
Brudin Lars
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
journal of evaluation in clinical practice
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.737
H-Index - 73
eISSN - 1365-2753
pISSN - 1356-1294
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2753.2005.00554.x
Subject(s) - health professionals , health care , medicine , pain management , physical therapy , economics , economic growth
Rationale When comparing patients’ pain ratings with the health care professional's conception of pain assessed by Visual Analogue Scales (VAS) ratings, statistical problems arise. Method and Result In this data simulation study we have shown that the tendency for health care professionals to underestimate severe pain compared with mild pain is probably not attributed to difficulties in judging severe pain more often than mild but the result of professionals having a different and often narrower distribution of their ratings compared with patients.