They're Doing It Wrong

We propose that pain intensity is not the best measure of the success of chronic-pain treatment. When pain is chronic, its intensity isn't a simple measure of something that can be easily fixed. Multiple measures of the complex causes and consequences of pain are needed to elucidate a person's pain and inform multimodal treatment. But no quantitative summary of these measures will adequately capture the burden or the meaning of chronic pain for a particular patient. For this purpose, nothing is more revealing or therapeutic than a conversation between a patient and a clinician, which allows the patient to be heard and the clinician to appreciate the patient's experiences and offer empathy, encouragement, mentorship, and hope. http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1507136?query=TOC&