Knowledge gaps and shortcomings: different definitions

KNOWLEDGE GAPS AND SHORTCOMINGS: DIFFERENT DEFINITIONS

Knowledge gaps about pain sensation, and its severity, existed until only recently. To a large extent, this was because most of the research was done on experimental animals rather than on actual chronic pain patients. There was thus no deep understanding of the difference between acute and chronic pain. (See Chapter 3 for a more detailed explanation.) There was also an over emphasis on pain's physical and mechanical causes based on the widespread, but wrong, assumption that pain is purely a sensory experience. The emotional and psychological factors involved in pain were relegated to secondary importance.
Different definitions
Even specialists from different fields of pain management and research define pain in different ways. A recent international conference of pain specialists provided a fascinating range of definitions of the word 'pain'.
1. Neurophysiologists understand 'pain' as being the appropriate response of specific pathways within a nervous system.
2. To experimental psychologists 'pain' is a behaviourial response to a stimulus.
3. Neurologists understand that 'pain' means the patient has perceived just that experience.
4. Clinical psychologists believe that an individual may complain of pain whether or not a physiological stimulus is identified.
5. Psychiatrists understand that 'pain' means a patient is in distress, which is expressed as a disagreeable somatic (body) sensation.
6. Acupuncturists usually define 'pain' as a complaint of a disagreeable sensation. The word pain is used to describe a subjective perception of distress. It is not a simple sensation like a primary sensation. Accompanied by a greater emotional response than any of these, pain is complex and subject to individual interpretation.
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Pain
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