How to manage pain?

Remember the time you took paracetamol to relieve your headache? What about using a cold pack for your sprains? Want to know more about ways to manage pain in palliative care patients? If so, watch this video!


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Recap 📝
Non- pharmacological interventions for pain:
1. Patient and family education.
2. Physical and sensory interventions. Help to position the patient, gently massage areas which are painful, and provide hot or cold packs to lessen the patient's pain when indicated.
3. Recognise or identify psychosocial factors influencing the pain experience.
4. Creative therapy such as music and art therapy can sometimes help to provide comfort, reduce anxiety and build resilience for palliative care patients.

Pharmacological interventions for pain:
The World Health Organisation Analgesic Ladder recommends 3 principles.
1) By the clock, where medications are given regularly rather than on demand.
2) By the mouth, where medicine taken orally is preferred for ease of use. If oral administration is not possible, the least invasive route should be chosen.
3) By the ladder, where prompt administration of medications is given, guided by the World Health Organisation analgesic ladder. This ladder encourages the administration of medications in the following order to control pain: non-opioids such as NSAIDs and paracetamol followed by weak opioids such as tramadol and lastly, followed by strong opioids such as morphine or fentanyl.
Adjuvant medications such as anti-depressants, anticonvulsants or steroids can be given at any step to help with pain control as well.

Transcript: https://bit.ly/3salGf3

Related video on pain:
What is pain? -    • What is pain?  
How to assess pain? -    • How to assess pain?  

References
1. Geziry AE, Toble Y, Kadhi FA, Pervaiz M, Nobani MA. Non-pharmacological pain management [Internet]. Qatar: IntechOpen; 2018. Pain management in special circumstances. Available from: https://www.intechopen.com/books/pain...

2. World Health Organization (1996‎). Cancer pain relief: with a guide to opioid availability, 2nd ed. World Health Organization. Available from: https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/1066...

Content experts: Dr Ho Peiyan and Henry Kong
Video producer: Perry Lee
Script composer: Lim Yujun
Voiceover: Henry Kong
This video is done in collaboration with GERI Institute - https://www.geri.com.sg/

All rights are reserved to GeriCare and there should not be any reproduction, publication, or adaptation of any part of the video content without prior approval from GeriCare.
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For more information, visit our website at https://www.gericarenorth.com/powerfacts