Assessing Undertreatment of Pain: The Patients' Perspectives

The undertreatment of pain is a major health issue in the United States, with children, elderly, and minorities at risk. An in-depth interview survey was conducted of 1,000 persons living at home with pain due to a medical condition to assess their attitudes toward pain, medications, and their doctors, as well as to identify the size and scope of undertreatment. Sixty-one percent have experienced pain for at least five years. For 40% of these patients the pain is constant; for 60%, intermittent; for 49%, moderate; for 22%, severe. Ninety percent have seen a physician; 67% are presently under a doctor's care; 86% see the same clinician for the pain and its cause; 50% see a general practitioner or family physician (GP/FP); only 13% have seen a pain specialist. Twenty-one percent have been scored on a pain scale; in half (49%) of those who were scored, a numeric scale was used; a verbal scale was used in 22%. Forty-two percent say their prescription analgesic is less than very effective; 67% indicated that their daily lives have been altered by pain; 51% say they cannot remember what it feels like not to be in pain.