Chronic Pain and Its Sequalea the Definition Essay

Chronic Pain and Its Sequalea

The definition of chronic pain varies from pain that has lingered 6 months after onset of sensation to 12 months after onset of sensation. Chronic pain has long been an intriguing subject to researchers of pain because of its lingering, usually non-eradicable, presence with no visible marker, at times, that seems to be causing the pain. Chronic pain can be a puzzle and frustration to medical practitioners since, occasionally, determinants remain invisible and pain seems to be lingering for no foreseeable reason. Patients of this category, therefore, may often be thought of as fantasizing their feelings (in the attempt, perhaps, to gain attention) when, unfortunately, their pain is more real and aggravating to them than it is to their practitioners. This situation is compounded by the fact that psychological tests (specifically the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI)) shows a correlation between neuroticism and chronic pain. Patients are, therefore, sometimes accused of being neurotic, when, in fact, it may be the continuous pain that is causing the neuroticism.

Goals for this exploration

Chronic pain has long been an intriguing subject to researchers of pain because of its lingering, usually non-eradicable, presence with no visible marker, at times, that seems to be causing the pain. Personal goals for the exploration of this concept are to explore present assumptions of chronic pain, to conduct research that analyzes its antecedent, defining characteristics, and consequences, and to investigate ways of application to nursing

Assumptions

Personal assumptions of chronic pain were that it was something that could be overcome with sufficient willpower.After all, medication and medical interventions seem to exist for a vast spectrum of diseases today, and these interventions seem to be potent. Supplementary to medical interventions are psychological interventions, such as cognitive modification therapy, where a person is helped to manipulate his or her thoughts in order to overcome challenging situations. My assumption was that the combination -- medical and psychological means -- would help a patient overcome pain.

4. Analysis (antecedent, defining characteristics, and consequences)

I found out, however, that chronic pain is a common problem but, nonetheless, challenging to healthcare providers because if its unclear etiology, resilience to therapy and medical interventions, and complex natural history. Chronic pain falls into two types: (a) nociceptive, i.e. caused by activation of nociceptors (sensory receptors that respond to pain by sending sensory signals to the brain and spinal cord), and (b) neuropathic, caused by damage to the nervous system (Turk & Okifuji, 2001). Until five decades ago, pain literature accepted the specificity theory propounded by Descartes (1664) that argued that pain traveled through a….....