Lansangan, Maria Dayanara M. BSN-1B How Do We Communicate About Pain?

A Systematic Analysis of the Semantic Contribution of Co-speech Gestures in Pain-focused Conversations

May 13, 2012 10:30-12:30 (M-S)

By: Samantha Rowbotham, Alison Wearden, Judith Holler, Donna Lloyd Pain is a sensation that we experienced throughout our lifetime and motivates us to seek help from doctors more than any other symptom. We are frequently driven to communicate our pain to others, whether to receive explanation, sympathy and understanding, or treatment and support. From the journal of Samantha Rowbothman, Judith Holler, Donna Lloyd and Alison Wearden, they contributed about co-speech gestures in pain-focused conversations. I learned that pain can be expressed through a 'semantic feature approach' where in you use gestures or non verbal communication. On their abstract portion, they stated that analysis reaveled that a considerable proportion of pain-focused talk was accompanied by gestures and that these gestures often contained more information about pain than speech itself. Further, some gestures represented information that was hardly represented in speech at all. Overall, these results suggest that gestures are integral to the communication of pain and need to be attended to if recipients are to obtain a fuller understanding of pain experience and provide help and support to pain sufferers. I certainly agree in using co-speech gestures is because it is a very useful tool in understanding pain. Sometimes when you are in pain, words can't really express it totally. In the Philippine setting, we have different cultures and ethnic groups to deal with. They have different practices on their own and can express pain clearly with their native language. Co-speech gesture is applicable when non-native speakers try to communicate about pain-related sensations, both the patient and doctor use gestures to negotiate a joint understanding of the sensations due to problems in finding the right verbal expression; highlighting an important avenue of future work. It would really help us in understanding pain when dealing with this kind of people without having a hard time and respecting their culture as well. When someone can speak your own language, it makes you feel comforatable and welcome giving you that freedom to express anything. Co-speech gestures are very useful in the nursing profession even when youre a registered nurse or a student nurse. Movement of the hands and arms, and in some cases the whole body, were classified as cospeech gestures. A plethora of research suggests that non verbal behavior plays an important role within doctorpatient communication and relationships as well as to nurse-patient relationship, particularly in terms of communicating emotion and providing clues to suffering distress. Patients used gestures to identify the location of the pain by pointing directly and performing gestures around the site of the pain; to demonstrate the cause of pain by miming actions that cause pain, and to convey semantic information about aspects of pain such as quality, for example by tapping their fingers lighlty on the palm of their hand to denote a tingling sensation. Cospeech gestures are also important in assessing of pain in children, different races, and people with language impairments. Reference: http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=7&sid=6382fbe2-86df-41a8-a82a-f5ff031d1bca %40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=70842821