[taneq]

I'm unsure how to interpret this statement. Are you saying that the amount of pain experienced depends on the patient's prior exposure and some 'tolerance' stat? And that we should ignore their actual statements about, and reactions to, stimulus when assessing the effect of that stimulus on them?

[kulahan]

I would agree with him if I think about it. Pain is a side effect. You are never trying to treat pain, you’re trying to treat whatever is causing pain.

This doesn’t even get into the fact that people might experience diminished or increased pain for a myriad of reasons which could completely throw off the severity assessment.

There are probably better methods to determine the seriousness of a scenario? I’m not a doctor.

[taneq]

I see where you're coming from but I think you're completely missing the actual discussion. Sure, The degree of perceived pain might be affected by many other factors. There's no distinction between 'pain' and 'perception of pain' because pain is a perception. Sure, we're not trying to fix the pain, we're trying to fix the problem, and the pain is a symptom of the problem.

However, this is an actual person we're trying to fix, and their pain is real, to them. I'm not sure in what way some quibble about "oh it's not actually caused by mechanical damage to your left clavicle, it's just a sensor issue" is going to comfort someone whose shoulder is fuckin' killing them. We need to fix that shoulder bearing, sure, but we also need to mute the alarms for a while, because we're not monsters.

[debacle]

My son had a testicular torsion. Normally, this is 10/10 pain and vomiting and fever and shock. All sorts of awfulness. If you didn't know it, you would have assumed his pain was no more than 4/10. It took an insistent pediatric nurse to convince us that something very serious was going on and that he needed to go to the ER right away.