Pained patients = unhappy patients
A poster presentation at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Pain Medicine in March showed a correlation between patients who had high post-surgical pain and low patient satisfaction scores.
Dermot Maher, MD, and colleagues from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles looked at responses from nearly 3,000 Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS) surveys filled out by surgical patients between March 2012 and Feburary 2013.
Two questions about pain management and two about general satisfaction showed a "statistically robust" relationship. The author notes that given how influential "a patient's perception of pain" is, it has the potential to overshadow positive elements of patient care.
Spine, non-spine orthopedics, and obstetrics and gynecology had the largest correlations to the pain scores, according to Maher.
