About this Research Topic

Background

For a number of years now, pain has been described as the fifth vital sign, and is viewed as an essential part of nursing care. However, assessment of pain has been hampered in the older population as a result of many potential confounding factors, largely related to communication issues.

Over the last few decades, there have been major developments in the area, with the
introduction of pain assessment tools specifically developed for measuring pain in the older population along with specific scales to enable identification of pain in those older adults who are unable to articulate their pain in a language that we can understand (e.g. in those with dementia). Furthermore, there has been the introduction of national guidelines for the assessment of pain in the older population in many countries around the world. These guidelines consolidate the literature in the field and make recommendations for best practice. Nevertheless, pain assessment is not widely utilized in all older adult care settings across the world and our recent survey across Europe demonstrates that there is still some way to go.

The aim of this special edition is to bring together experts from around the world to report on the state of play in their countries regarding assessment of pain in the older population. Issues such as guidelines, assessment tools and practices will be addressed.

We are happy to accept any type of paper including for example, systematic reviews, case studies, cohort studies, qualitative or quantitative studies in English language only. We are looking at factors influencing pain assessment, pain assessment tools, behavioral pain assessment tools, barriers to pain assessment.

Keywords: Pain, Aging, Dementia, Assessment, Measurement tools

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