Chinese Pain Descriptors Used by Medical Personnel: A Case Study in Beijing

Pain compels patients to visit doctors and is an inevitable topic of discussion between doctors and patients. The objective of the study was to investigate Chinese pain descriptors and explore their characteristics among 93 medical personnel in Beijing. This study used a questionnaire to collect Chinese pain descriptors used by medical personnel with more than two years of clinical experience. By qualitative analysis, 68 types of pain descriptors were identified from 801 descriptors and classified into 6 domains: sensory, affective, intensity, cause, physical effect, and temporal. Sensory pain descriptors were mentioned most frequently by the medical personnel (70.8%), whereas affective pain descriptors were mentioned least frequently (1.2%). The result revealed that medical personnel in Beijing seldom used affective descriptors, indicating that they tried to avoid their personal emotions when expressing pain. Based on the pain descriptors used by Chinese medical personnel, this study designed a visual pain assessment tool.