Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2020

Comments

This article is the author's final published version in Foot and Ankle Orthopaedics, Volume 5, Issue 3, 2020.

The published version is available at https://doi.org/10.1177/2473011420948500.

Copyright © The Author(s) 2020

Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/ open-access-at-sage).

Abstract

Background: The purpose of this study was to compare postoperative foot and ankle patient-reported visual analog pain scores (VAS) to nursing staff and the treating surgeon during a single encounter. Prior literature established preoperative patients reported higher pain scores to a surgeon as compared to nursing staff. We hypothesized that there will be no differences in postoperative patients’ pain scores when reporting to nursing staff vs a surgeon. Methods: This study was a retrospective cohort of 201 consecutive postoperative foot and ankle patients with 3 follow-up encounters treated by a single surgeon. The patients were asked to rate their pain intensity using the VAS with 0 “no pain” and 10 “worst pain” at 2, 6, and 12 weeks postoperatively by a nurse and surgeon. Results: At all time intervals, the mean pain score was significantly higher when reported to the surgeon, although these were not clinically relevant. The mean scores at 2 weeks were 2.8 reported to the surgeon and 2.5 reported to the nurse (P <.001). The mean scores at 6 weeks were 2.0 reported to the surgeon and 1.8 reported to the nurse (P =.002). The mean scores at 12 weeks were 2.3 reported to the surgeon and 2.0 reported to the nurse (P =.005). Conclusion: This study found that postoperative foot and ankle patients did not overemphasize their VAS pain scores to the physician vs nursing staff. These findings contrast with our 2 previous studies that found preoperative and nonoperative patients reported clinically significant higher scores to the surgeon. Level of Evidence: Level III, comparative study.

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License

Language

English

Included in

Orthopedics Commons

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