General history. An accurate pain assessment includes the patient's age, past medical and surgical history, medications, allergies, and baseline cognitive and functional status. The increased rate of chronic health disorders in advanced age is related to the high prevalence of pain in older adults ( Table 1 ). Furthermore, pain management among older adults is complicated by multiple, concomitant causes and locations of pain (Horgas, 2003), making it difficult to distinguish acute pain caused by a new illness from that of an old condition. Knowing the patient's baseline level of functioning and taking a focused history will help make this differentiation.
Nursing communication skills play an important role in pain assessment. Good communication depends on the nurse's ability to recognize sensory and cognitive impairments. Decreased hearing and vision may limit verbal communication as well as use of written pain assessment tools. Patience also helps. Some patients require extra time to consider the posed question and formulate an appropriate answer. In turn, the nurse may need to adapt his or her method of communication by speaking more slowly or distinctly in a quiet setting. Without any known biological markers or diagnostic tests that measure pain, the patient's self-report remains the only reliable indicator of the existence of pain and its intensity (McCaffery & Pasero, 1999). Family members or caregivers can provide information about the patient's baseline cognitive and physical functioning and validate history if the patient displays impaired cognition or communication