Paper
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
9:30 AM - 10:00 AM
Wednesday, July 21, 2004
2:30 PM - 3:00 PM
This presentation is part of : Posters
Interclass Reliability of Tactile Technology for Pain Evaluation in Blind People
Lorita Marlena Freitag Pagliuca, PHD, NR and Ana Cláudia de Souza Leite, PhD. Nursing Department, Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Brazil
Learning Objective #1: Understand scales for pain evaluation in blind people
Learning Objective #2: Apply scales for pain evaluation in blind people
Introduction:There is currently a variety of instruments used in order to evaluate pain, being them unidimensional, multidimensional or behavioral. These scales are traditionally of visual nature, limitating its use to the people with this kind of disability. Toniolly and Pagliuca (2003) developed instruments in order to facilitate the non-visual communication between blind people with pain and health professionals. The first one is called Tactile Scale of Pain and consists of a tridimensional object with a rectangular shape and ten kinds of textures applied in contrast, from the most to the less rough, and a smooth region on a superior surface in order to indicate absence of pain. The second, also tridemensional, is called Tactile Scale of Pain. It has a pyramid shape, is cut longitudinally in the middle with a smooth surface, and the base indicates the absence of pain and the steps indicate the contrast. Objective: This study aims at using these scales in the clinical evaluation of pain in blind athletes. In order to do that, the clinical situation of pain was characterized by the athlete’s performance required for competitions. Methodology: From a total of 38 blind athletes, the scales were applied in comparison with the Analogical Scale of pain (EVA) in 36 subjects before and after the competition, in August 2003, during the II International Games for Blind People – IBSA, in Québec – Canada. The data were processed by the SSPS program and the interclass reliability values were calculated before and after the competitions. Results: The results showed more important reliability avarages for the second scale in relation to the standard scale. Conclusion: One concluded that the Tactile Scale of Pain is more suitable to the blind people necessities and that it has reliability properties that assure the internal agreement with characteristics of an ordinal and interval scale.

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Sigma Theta Tau International
July 21, 2004