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.

Thanks for watching, friend! 🙂

VIDEO TRANSCRIPT

Hey friend, in this video we are going to talk about the nursing pain assessment. We’ll walk through the 6 key points of the nursing pain assessment, so you always know what questions to ask. Plus, I’ll give you a handy dandy mnemonic so you won’t forget it! Now, before we get started, make sure you hit that subscribe button and click the bell icon so you don’t miss out on a future video to help you succeed in nursing school. Now, let’s do this!

Alrighty, so pain is super important to assess. Obviously, we want to keep our patient comfortable, but it can also tell us a lot about what might be going on with their condition. So it’s really, really important that you always assess pain when you go into assess your patient for the first time, and also throughout your shift. Often times their condition will change throughout the day or night, so you should always be assessing!

And thankfully, there is a handy mnemonic for the nursing pain assessment that will help you remember the questions you need to ask when you’re assessing a patient’s pain. And I’ve also got a free cheat sheet that you can download with this mnemonic and with these questions as well, so make sure you download that at the end of this video.

So the nursing pain assessment mnemonic is OPQRST, and it stands for onset, provocation or palliation, quality, region or radiation, severity, and timing. I know some of those are big, scary words, so let’s dive into each of these and explain them.

Alright, so onset means what was going on when the pain began, so what was the patient doing? And was it pretty sudden or was it more of a gradual process with how the pain started? So you’ll ask these questions to your patient: What were you doing when the pain started? And did it happen pretty suddenly, or had it been going on for a while?

Now, the P in OPQRST, stands for provocation or palliation. Provocation means what provokes the pain, and palliation means what makes it better. So the 2 questions you should in this category are: What makes the pain worse? And what makes the pain better?

The Q stands for quality, and here you’ll have your patient describe the pain, meaning, what’s the quality of the pain? Is it dull, stabbing, sharp, burning, tingling, throbbing, tearing, or something else? All of these words help describe the quality of the pain. So a good question to ask here is: “Can you describe the pain for me?”

Now the R in OPQRST stands for region or radiation, region meaning what area of the body is the pain occurring, and radiation meaning is it radiating to anywhere else. So for example, is the pain starting in the foot but radiating up the leg?, or starting in the shoulder and radiating down the back? Things like that. So for this one, you’ll need to ask, “Where is the pain located? And is it spreading or extending to another area?”

The S stands for severity. And here you’ll usually have your patient rate their pain on a scale of 0-10. I like to ask, “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?” You can also switch up this question and ask what their pain level was when their pain started as well, or what it was an hour ago, or a day ago, or whatever time frame makes the most sense to ask about.

And finally, the T in OPQRST stands for timing. And for this one, I consider timing to mean a few different things: what were they doing at the time the pain started (meaning the onset of the pain)?, What is the timing of the pain itself? (is it always there, does it come and go?), how has the pain changed over time? (is there anything different about it than when it started?), and has it ever happened before?

So that is the nursing pain assessment: OPQRST: Onset, provocation or palliation, quality, region or radiation, severity, and timing. Don’t forget to download your free nursing pain assessment cheat sheet, so you always know what questions to ask.

And as always, hit that like button, share this video with your friends, and don’t forget to subscribe and hit the bell so you never miss a video.

Thank you so much for watching friend. Now go become the nurse that God created only YOU to be. I’ll catch you right back here next time, on the nursing school show. Take care.

Thanks for being all around amazing, my friend! Now go become the nurse that God created ONLY YOU to be. 🙂