https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/publichealth...
> In 2001, the Joint Commission rolled out its Pain Management Standards, which helped grow the idea of pain as a "fifth vital sign." It required healthcare providers to ask every patient about their pain, given the perception at the time was that pain was undertreated.
My parents have complained about this; my mom's an RN, who's been everything from a home health nurse to an ICU nurse to a clinic nurse in a podiatrist's office, and my dad's a CRNA, and they talk about people who are likely drug-seeking and people who just don't like any discomfort, even stuff that, if you felt like that on a normal day, wouldn't cause you to take anything for it if you were a normal person.
So you have a mandate to Take Pain Really, Really Seriously. You have someone in a clinic, or on a table, groaning about how it hurts even though there's nothing, objectively, wrong with them. What do you do?