Healthcare professionals may overestimate the significance of postoperative pain for patients following day case surgery, as despite 17-20% reporting unacceptable pain, few were concerned or sought medical help.
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Reported unacceptable pain may not prompt patient worry or GP contact after day surgery; hypothesis-generating for patient-centered pain assessment.
Day case surgery is an expanding area within the NHS. However, pain following day case procedures remains a constant concern for healthcare professionals. An audit of postoperative pain following a range of day case procedures over a 2-year period at a general hospital in the north of England found that 17-20% of patients experienced unacceptable levels of pain. However, very few of these patients were worried about the pain they experienced and none contacted their GP. This implies that healthcare professionals overestimate the significance of postoperative pain for the patients concerned.
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Mackintosh et al. (1998) studied this question.
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