Neuroplasticity and the Potentially Detrimental Effects of a Pain Chart
What pain scoring can teach a brain to repeat, and what I learned about attention, distraction, and building a life beyond pain.
A 'Pain Chart' is most commonly used in a hospital and inpatient setting, but it is also widely known as a method to analyze pain levels in an effort to offer the most optimal treatment for pain management.
**How these charts work:**
In efforts to effectively analyze a patient's 'Pain Level,' these charts are formatted from 0-10. Each increased number is associated with a higher pain level, which overall will lead to the end result commonly referred to as a 'Pain Score.' This score will be the determining factor of how intense the patient's pain level is.
Personally, I believe that these 'Pain charts,' although effective in determining pain levels, have harmful negative consequences and impacts. By this, I mean, this method encourages the patients to thoroughly analyze their body, detecting where exactly the pain is, describing what it feels like, and pinpointing an exact number to its intensity. Although I understand the importance of this system, I feel like there could be less of an emphasis on the analysis that is required during this process.
**How I would modify it:**
If I were to revise this approach, I'd restructure it. Instead of employing numerical values associated with increasing pain levels, I'd shift to intensity levels as the key factor in assessing the severity of the patient's pain. This adjustment aims to eliminate the need for exhaustive analysis by replacing specific values with descriptors like 'Great,' 'Good,' 'Moderate,' 'Bad,' and 'Really bad.' In this context, 'Great' would indicate well-controlled pain, while 'Really bad' suggests severe, uncontrolled pain. I believe this adjustment could maintain effectiveness without the potential drawbacks of prolonged, intensive analysis. Over time, such analysis could lead to the formation of neuroplasticity pathways, encouraging patients to continually scrutinize their bodies, detect any discomfort, and, ultimately, experience unnecessary pain, dwelling on the sensations.
**Neuroplasticity** refers to neuro pathways and connections in the brain that wire activity and have the capability to rewire activity, primarily formed from activities and actions we have engaged in for some time. In shortened terms, it is essentially the brain's neurons that control and have the ability to rewire habits picked up from excessive engagement in those particular things or activities. I learned about this from the Pain Rehabilitation Clinic (PRC) at Mayo Clinic. This pain clinic was not like just any 'Pain Rehabilitation Centers'; it was a clinic comprised of medical professionals, all types of departments from Occupational therapy, physical therapy, and many others, with the shared goal of providing us patients with new tools to manage and cope with our pain. They taught us about the importance of deep breathing, the power of positive mindsets, and most importantly, this program provided us with lots of healthy activities and structured events such as daily physical therapy, social events spent with peers, OTPT, and other things that created an overall healthy lifestyle alternative change compared to our previous bad habits and constant desire to analyze, pinpoint, and dwell on our pain.
Prior to the clinic, I and many individuals in it had been living in pain and dwelling on the feeling, using the 'Pain Charts' to pinpoint an exact number on our pain constantly. We were so deep in the rabbit hole, and pain was starting to feel like a defining chapter in our lives, until we had experienced this life-changing program, known as the (PRC) clinic. Changing our lifestyles for the length of the program, learning new coping mechanisms, and in general changing our way of thinking entirely, not to dwell on pain, had completely changed our neuroplasticity and pathways in our brain from unhealthy behaviors such as dwelling on pain, negativities, and letting pain become in control, to utilizing tools such as distraction, deep breathing, and generally not thinking about pain.
Thanks so much for reading, have a great day!