Pain Assessment and Management
Pain assessment and management involves the evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of multiple existing types of pains. These can be acute, cancer pain or chronic pains but often they can be combined. Several therapies used in pain management include pain-relieving medications, complementary approaches and physical therapeutic techniques among others. They help in the reduction of suffering of a patient thus improving their quality of life. However, pain management and assessment has been associated with racial disparity over the years and thus, this paper seeks to examine pain under treatment among the African American women.Pain Assessment and Management
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Question
In the United States, does the African American women population experience under treatment of pain conditions compared to the White Americans?
According to Hoffman et al. (2016), the women of African American origin are often undertreated for pain when compared to the White American women. This is largely associated with false beliefs regarding the capability of Africans to handle pain and biological differences such as having a ‘thick skin’. These beliefs have been adopted by the medics who base their clinical decisions on them and hence report the Black American women pain as lower than that of the White American woman leading to less accurate treatment.
Some previous research indicate that African American women are less likely to be prescribed pain management medications compared to the White Women in the US healthcare systems. In the event they are prescribed, the medication is often of lower quantity and sometimes quality. For instance, in the emergency room, only 57% of the African American women with extremity fractures are likely to receive analgesics compared to 74% of the White women likelihood regardless of presenting similar pain reports (Hoffman et al., 2016). Consequently, those suffering from severe pain have a lesser chance of receiving opioids or any moderate pain medication (Groenewald et al., 2018). Pain Assessment and Management
References
Groenewald, C. B., Rabbitts, J. A., Hansen, E., & Palermo, T. M. (2018). Racial differences in opioid prescribing for children in the United States. Pain, 159(10), 2050.
Hoffman, K. M., Trawalter, S., Axt, J. R., & Oliver, M. N. (2016). Racial bias in pain assessment and treatment recommendations, and false beliefs about biological differences between blacks and whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 113(16), 4296-4301. Pain Assessment and Management