earticle

영어

Manipulative therapies are commonly used in the treatment of pain and effective for pain relief. Appropriate assessment of pain is necessary for proper treatment and objective evaluation of treatment effects. However, it is unknown how pain assessment tools are used in the fi eld of manipulative therapy. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to investigate the manipulative therapists’ perception and use of pain assessment tools. A total of 155 manipulative practitioners working in Seoul and Kyongkido and college students who were awarded a manipulative therapy certifi cation completed survey questionnaires. The majority of respondents did not use pain assessment tools in the fi eld of manipulative therapy. Users knew pain assessment tools mostly through eduction and textbooks. They used the tools mostly for the initial diagnosis of pain. The most commonly used scale to assess pain was the brief pain inventory (BPI) followed by the McGill Pain Questionnaire and numerical rating scale. The reasons for not using pain assessment scales were the lack of perception and difficulty in accessing information. The majority of non-users were willing to use tools to assess pain and have education on pain scales. To promote using pain assessment scales non-users thought that increase in advertisements and expanding opportunity in education would be mostly important. They also thought that BPI was the most appropriate scale to assess pain. The majority of respondents agreed on need for development of new pain scale specialized for the fi eld of complementary and alternative medicine including lifestyle and stress evaluation. The results of this study suggest that use of pain scales should be propagated and promoted in complementary and alternative medicine through the advertisements and education about the need and instructions for pain assessment tools.