Pain assessment from patients with burns and their nurses

We investigated pain experienced during burn wound debridement. Forty-nine adult patients with burns and 27 nurses submitted 123 pairs of visual analog scale pain ratings for burn wound debridements. While patients' overall visual analog scale pain scores were found to be evenly distributed, worst pain scores yielded a bimodal distribution with groups centered around means of 2.0 (low pain group) and 7.0 (high pain group). Low and high pain groups did not differ in age, sex, or total body surface area burned. Patient and nurse pain ratings were found to be highly correlated. According to one researcher's criteria, 53% of nurse pain ratings were accurate. Accuracy of nurses' ratings was unrelated to nursing experience or educational level. Future strategies are presented for comparing high and low pain groups and increasing nurse pain rating accuracy.