The reasons for that include lack of knowledge of chronic pain assessment and lack of a strategy to deal with the many factors that contribute to the pain problem.
Pain management is time consuming and chronic pain patients often have unrealistic expectations.
In this essay, a strategy for case formulation and treatment will be developed and the role of pain rehabilitation will be introduced. Pain is defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain as an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience due to actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage. What is universal is the idea of tissue damage making pain a high priority symptom in the mind of the person experiencing it. Chronic pain is pain that persists far beyond the expected recovery time. Understanding these terms will help us with our pain assessment.