Managing acute abdominal pain in the emergency centre: Lessons from a patient's experience

Pain is one of the most common reasons people present to the emergency centre with 7-10% of presentations being due to acute abdominal pain. However, pain is also often neglected by clinicians in emergency centres. The well validated South African Triage Score (SATS) incorporates pain assessment in...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Romy Parker, Gill J. Bedwell, Peter Hodkinson, Andrit Lourens, Mashiko Setshedi
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Elsevier 2021
Materias:
R
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/347cd996a60a403fb05f7698b1dc7ecb
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Pain is one of the most common reasons people present to the emergency centre with 7-10% of presentations being due to acute abdominal pain. However, pain is also often neglected by clinicians in emergency centres. The well validated South African Triage Score (SATS) incorporates pain assessment in the prioritising of patients with the aim of guiding clinicians. Based on the SATS, severe pain (a score of ≥8 out of 10) should prompt the clinician to initiate treatment within 10 min of presentation, as unmanaged pain has multiple negative consequences, including poor outcomes of the acute incident with delayed healing and increased risk of developing chronic pain. In this commentary, we present a patient's experience when attending an emergency centre for acute abdominal pain, describe relevant pain mechanisms and highlight the stages where clinical management could have been optimised.