Does your healthcare provider (HCP) have a good idea of how your arthritis pain affects your everyday life?
Pain is often hard to describe. And pain affects each of us differently. But if your HCP doesn't fully understand how your pain is affecting you, it could lead to undertreatment—which means you don’t get the care you need to help navigate the tasks of everyday life.
To enhance your conversation with your HCP and help ensure that you're providing enough feedback to create an effective treatment plan, try using this downloadable and printable arthritis pain scale. You can use it to rate the pain you experience with a variety of daily activities and share this information with your HCP in a clear and easy to read format.
This pain scale is a good way to check in with yourself about how your pain may be affecting your life and to prepare for your HCP next appointment. Just remember that many HCPs who specialize in treating arthritis—such as orthopedists and rheumatologists—use more detailed scales that are usually completed online before an office visit. Your HCP will let you know exactly how they’d like you to track and measure your pain, but you can get started on that process today.
