That means every time nurses check pulse, temperature, respiration and blood pressure, they should check for pain or discomfort, too, and treat it. It's the latest symbol of a dramatic shift in philosophy. As study after study suggested that pain is horribly undertreated in the United States, that making patients more comfortable actually improves their healing, and that it's very rare for someone to get addicted to prescribed painkillers, doctors have become less cautious about treating pain. Pain is hard to measure, because it's so subjective. You can't put a monitor on it, can't use a thermometer.
People feel pain differently, and they express it differently, too.
And there is such an emotional overlay to pain. It's emotional because of what it might represent. For someone with cancer, the pain may represent a fear that the cancer has come back. So it's not an exact science. Local doctors and nurses are using a handful of different scales to measure discomfort.