Fundamentals of Nursing Q 244
Christine Ann is about to take her NCLEX examination next week and is currently reviewing the concept of pain. Which scientific rationale would indicate that she understands the topic?
A. Pain is an objective sign of a more serious problem.
B. Pain sensation is affected by a client's anticipation of pain.
C. Intractable pain may be relieved by treatment.
D. Psychological factors rarely contribute to a client's pain perception.
Correct Answer: B. Pain sensation is affected by a client’s anticipation of pain.
Phases of pain experience include the anticipation of pain. Fear and anxiety affect a person’s response to sensation and typically intensify the pain. Similarly, other factors such as cognitive appraisal of the meaning of the sensation, the emotional and psychophysiological reactions, expectations, and coping skills can all serve as feedback to influence pain perception.
Option A: Pain is a subjective sensation that cannot be quantified by anyone except the person experiencing it. Pain refers to the product of higher brain center processing; it entails the actual unpleasant emotional and sensory experience generated from nervous signals. Reports of pain are thus not merely a direct output of nociception, they involve interaction with numerous inputs (attention, affective dimensions, autonomic variables, immune variables, and more), and may be considered more accurately from the perspective of a neuromatrix.
Option C: Intractable pain is moderate to severe pain that cannot be relieved by any known treatment. Intractable pain refers to a type of pain that can’t be controlled with standard medical care. Intractable essentially means difficult to treat or manage. This type of pain isn’t curable, so the focus of treatment is to reduce the discomfort.
Option D: Psychological factors contribute to a client’s pain perception. In many cases, pain results from emotions, such as hostility, guilt, or depression. There are a number of psychological processes behind pain perception. Attentional orienting to the painful sensation and its source can serve to heighten the painful experience. For instance, patients with somatic preoccupation and hypochondriasis are found to over-attend to bodily sensations, amplifying them as pain.