Pain is often poorly managed in
older people and there is a need
for comprehensive guidelines to
advise practitioners on how they
can ensure pain management is tailored to
this group. With this in mind, we have
researched the literature on pain management
in older people and used our findings
to create a set of guidelines, usable by all
health professionals working in any setting.
We chose not to address assessment
of pain as this has been published previously
and is currently being updated. The
focus is on chronic pain, which is defined
as “that which persists beyond the expected
healing time” (Merskey and Bogduk, 1994).