According to a story in the Tuesday issue of the Washington Times:
That order, from the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations, is more than just a minor pain in the neck to health care facilities.
It is a live-or-die order to comply or lose accreditation.
Doctors, nurses and administrators are scrambling to comply with the JCAHO standards adopted more than a year ago that go into effect Jan. 1.
How well it works will depend on not only the health professionals but also their patients.
The whole idea is that no one is guaranteed to be kept free of any and all pain, but that every patient who experiences pain is entitled, as a matter of right, to have that pain recognized, diagnosed and treated in the best way known.
It begins with patients' not hesitating to let those caring for them know they are in pain, that it is no longer going to be construed as "bothering the doctor."
Some hospitals are already distributing leaflets and posting signs in their halls advising patients that they have a right – and are encouraged – to complain if a doctor or nurse doesn't help.
Patients will then be asked to try to define their pain, rating it on a scale of 1 (minor) to 10 (unbearable).
Physicians will be expected to prescribe pain medication that, where possible, is not addictive.
And attendants will receive additional training on how better to recognize and treat pain.
It's "a watershed event," said Dr. Russell Portenoy, pain-medicine chairman of New York's Beth Israel Medical Center.
"No one has ever promised patients no pain. But what JCAHO wants to do is promise people their pain will be assessed and managed in a state-of-the-art way."
Christine Miaskowski, nursing chair at the University of California at San Francisco and president-elect of the American Pain Society, issued a note of caution:
"This is not going to happen overnight. Patients are going to have to demand better care.
"Unrelieved pain has negative effects. Just like they need an antibiotic to treat infection, they need analgesics to treat their pain."
A pain specialist who helped write the standards, June Dahl of the University of Wisconsin, said:
"People think it's like an 11th commandment: 'Thou had surgery, thou should have pain.'
Or that if you have cancer, you must have pain. Pain can be relieved."
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