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As compared to pain-on-paper drawings by
using grid-based methods; electronic pain drawings analyze results right
after completion of the drawings that too, without the need for time-consuming
digitization.
According to a recent study published in 'JMIR mHealth and uHealth', the electronic Pain drawings (PDs) can help improve doctors' understanding of patients suffering from acute pain in a clinical setting. Past few years have witnessed a shift toward the tablet-based acquisition of PDs, and various studies have been performed to test the reliability, usefulness and repeatability of electronic PDs.
But, as per Nour Shaballout
et al. no study has examined the potential role of electronic PDs in clinical
assessment and treatment of inpatients in acute pain situations. Nour
Shaballout and researchers assessed whether knowledge of the patients'
electronic PD has the potential to enhance the doctors' understanding of their
patients and to affect their clinical decision making. Also, these researchers
aimed to recognise the differences between electronic PDs of patients and their
treating pain specialists in an acute pain situation and find those particular
characteristics derived from the PDs that had a huge impact on the doctors'
understanding. The electronic PDs from
47 inpatients in acute pain situations were obtained before their consultation
with a pain specialist on a tablet personal computer with the help of a stylus.
These specialists drew their proposition of the patients' pain following
anamnesis and physical examination before looking at their patients' drawings.
These patients' drawings were then revealed to the doctors. They were asked to
analyse how much the additional information improved their understanding of the
case and how much it affected their clinical decision on an 11-point Likert
scale (0='not at all' and 10='very much'). The similarities and differences of
patients' and doctors' PDs were investigated via visual inspection and by
calculating the Jaccard index and intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) of
the pain area and number of the pain clusters. The exploratory analyses were
performed using correlation tables to recognise particular factors that
influenced doctors' understanding. It was found that the patients' PDs
significantly improved the doctors' understanding and to a lesser extent their
clinical decision. Electronic PDs of patients and doctors depicted fair to good
similarity for pain extent and widespreadness being the crucial factors in
helping doctors to understand their patients. The researchers concluded,
"the ability of electronic PDs to visualize differences between doctors' and
patients' conception of pain can improve the doctor-patient
communication."
JMIR mHealth and uHealth
Digital Pain Drawings Can Improve Doctors’ Understanding of Acute Pain Patients: Survey and Pain Drawing Analysis
Nour Shaballout et al.
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