This has become a fairly common sentiment I see on here, and as someone who treats pain as my job every single day I want to address this misunderstanding of how we use a pain scale. The point isn't that it's mutually understood. The point is that pain is subjective. 1/x https://twitter.com/BennettEmpty/status/1343361073534140416

When I ask someone to rate pain, I'm trying to get a sense of where the pain stands relative to what they think is tolerable, where it was yesterday, how my medications worked for the pain, and what their pain goals are. Pain scales (1-10, FACES etc) are validated tools. 2/x

If you take a good pain history most of my patients will say things like:
"Right now my pain is a 7/10 and spikes up to 9/10 with movement. When I take my medicine it goes to a 4/10 and that's tolerable for me. I usually take my medicine if I'm at a 5-6/10." THIS IS USEFUL! 3/x

For those in peds, important to remember is that young children usually aren't able to give a pain report beyond what they are feeling right in the moment they are being asked. they can't say, for example, how they feel on average over the past day. 4/x

But if you take away nothing else from this thread: there is no magic number that means someone hurts a lot or a little. Just like every other part of a history the pain history requires skill and understanding. But don't disregard using a pain scale, it has it's place. 5/5