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Listening to the Patients is Desirable in Pain Management

After reading this week’s articles on pain, a central question that continues to resonate on my mind is: should the lived experience of patients or expert’s explanation serve as the basis for the design of therapy for pain.
I consider the above question as intriguing, because our understanding or the values we attach to a problem serve as a basis for the design of a therapy for the ailment. I use us to refer to the public.
My question about which view should take precedence over the other is based on the accounts in this week’s readings. Of particular interest to me is how the MPQ became a tool to legitimize the concept of pain, consequently impacting the terminologies and tools used for pain management. So I ask, could such articulation of terminologies be representative? Can it accurately reflect what the patients feel? I believe that the patient should be allowed to spontaneously generate words that accurately reflect or capture their experiences; otherwise we could be robbing the patients of their agency.

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