Children's pain vocabulary

Abstract

This paper will address children's pain vocabulary, that is, the self-reported words provided by the children, in a descriptive study carried out to examine how a group of school-age children view their pain. This was an initial step to demonstrate that children can describe pain and do possess a pain vocabulary. Our aim was to determine the feasibility of achieving a meaningful grouping of children's pain words and the pain intensity implied by the words. A sample of 40 school-age children were the subjects for this study. All the pain word descriptors used by the children in response to the question 'Can you think of words to describe what pain feels like?' were categorized on the basis of the Melzack classification.

Multidimensional tools: application of pain quality cards in children

“…The study authors alert about the inexistence of an adequate instrument for all children (11) . Study results show that children aged five or six identified sensorial-distinguishing words more frequently than motivational-affective or cognitiveevaluative words (12) .…”

The language of pain in Vietnamese

“…These studies, in addition to investigating the quantitative meanings of pain terms such as hurt, ache, and pain (Bergh, Ek, & Martensson, 2013;Bergh & Sjostrom, 2007), report a list of lexical items about pain (Duggleby, 2002;Jerrett & Evans, 1986), concentrate on how pain language is produced at the lexical, phrasal, and sentential level (Bergh et al, 2005;Jensen et al, 2013;Kortesluoma & Nikkonen, 2006;Strong et al, 2009), and explore the purposes/meanings/metaphors of pain (Aldrich & Eccleston, 2000;Kortesluoma & Nikkonen, 2006;Kugelmann, 1999;Söderberg & Norberg, 1995). In particular, some studies investigate gender differences in the use of language to describe pain (Strong et al, 2009).…”

“…They range from the philosophical perspective (Wittgenstein, 1953(Wittgenstein, , 1963(Wittgenstein, , 1967 to the bio-psycho-social perspective (Aldrich & Eccleston, 2000;Bergh, Jakobsson, Sjostrom, & Steen, 2005;Cleeland & Ryan, 1994;Duggleby, 2002;Jensen, Johnson, Gertz, Galer, & Gammaitoni, 2013;Jerrett & Evans, 1986;Kortesluoma & Nikkonen, 2006;Kugelmann, 1999;Melzack, 1975Melzack, , 1987Söderberg & Norberg, 1995;Strong et al, 2009), to the interpretive language-based perspective with a focus on semantics (Diller, 1980;Fabrega & Tyma, 1976a, 1976bPugh, 1991), and to the theoretical linguistic perspective (Bacchini, 2008;Halliday, 1998;Kövecses, 2008;Lascaratou, 2007Lascaratou, , 2008Lascaratou & Hatzidaki, 2002;Lascaratou & Marmaridou, 2005).…”

“…The pain descriptions based on structured questionnaires may not mirror the complete experience of pain (Kortesluoma & Nikkonen, 2006;McGuire, 1984;Söderberg & Norberg, 1995). Several studies on the language of pain have indicated that patients describe pain by using words that are not found in the MPQ, and that many of the MPQ words are not used by patients, for example, Duggleby (2002), Jerrett and Evans (1986), and Strong et al (2009).…”

“…In brief, although the MPQ has confirmed the role of language in pain communication by helping the patients to describe their pain, its validity is questioned as to whether it can provide sufficient richness and depth about the patients' pain experiences (Duggleby, 2002;Fernandez & Towery, 1996;Jerrett & Evans, 1986;Sussex, 2009). What is more, the questionnaire, in either the long or short form, focuses purely on the medical and emotional aspects of pain, and fails to incorporate its socio-cultural aspects, despite the fact that pain is a bio-psycho-social phenomenon.…”