Pain Scoring Scales – How to Improve Pain Assessment in Cats and Dogs
Pain scoring scales have become popular in veterinary medicine in the last decade as a tool to assess pain however, in busy practices and hospitals, it can be a challenging routine to implement often leading to the administration of prescribed analgesia without prior assessment or to suboptimal pain relief. A 2007 study evaluating the attitude of veterinary nurses in the UK using pain scoring systems revealed that only 8.1% of the practices were using formal pain scoring scales, despite 80% of participants agreeing that the scales are a useful tool¹. Furthermore, 96.8% of participants recognised that their knowledge of pain assessment could be improved¹. In a more recent survey to veterinarians and technicians in the USA, 47.6% reported using pain scoring scales routinely, 16.3% sometimes, and 36.1% not². The last group cited lack of training and busy caseload as the main reasons for not using pain scoring scales².