OPQRST Pain Assessment (Nursing)

The OPQRST nursing pain assessment is super important for you to know as a nursing student. You’ll need to learn how to assess pain in order to keep your patients comfortable, and also to figure out what might be going on in their body, because pain can tell you a lot about a patients condition.

So, you might be thinking, what the heck does OPQRST even mean?

OPQRST is a handy dandy mnemonic for assessing pain.

It stands for:
O: Onset
P: Provocation or Palliation
Q: Quality
R: Region or Radiation
S: Severity
T: Timing

And there are some key questions you’ll need to ask for each of these categories:

O: Onset:
What were you doing when the pain started?
Did the pain happen suddenly, or had it been coming on for a while?

P: Provocation or Palliation
What makes the pain worse?
What makes the pain better?

Q: Quality
Can you describe the pain for me?

R: Region or Radiation
Where is the pain located?
Is it spreading or extending to another area?

S: Severity
On a scale of 0-10, with 0 being no pain at all, and 10 being the worst possible pain imaginable, where is your pain level at right now?

T: Timing
What were you doing when the pain started?
Is the pain always there or does it come and go?
Is there anything different about the pain than when it started?
Has this pain ever happened before?

The OPQRST mnemonic can be super handy when you’re at your nursing school clinicals, or when you need to remember it during lecture class or skills lab.

And of course, we’ve got a free cheat sheet for you to print off so that you can remember all of these questions to ask for the OPQRST pain assessment: http://bit.ly/nursingsos11

Thanks for watching, friend! 🙂

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Nursing Care Plans In 4 Simple Steps (2018)

How To Write A Nursing Diagnosis:

Nursing Diagnosis: 3 Tips For A Great Nursing Care Plan

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