A nonverbal scale for ICU patients who are sedated or otherwise unable to express their pain.

Pain assessment and management are components of the Joint Commission 2001 standards of care that require every patient to be assessed for pain. Assessment and management of pain are essential to provision of quality care in all settings. Several valid and useful scales for rating the intensity of pain in most children and adults are available. These various verbal (no pain to worst pain), pictorial (Faces scale), and numeric (1–10) scales for rating pain are commonly used with alert adult or child patients in hospitals and home care. These scales require patients to be able to cognitively indicate a position on a line from no pain to worst possible pain, select a picture that expresses their pain level, or select a number between 1 and 10 to represent their pain level. It is important...

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