Pain travels a road with four stops — and every analgesic class is a roadblock at exactly one of them. Knowing which stop a drug works at tells you what it can relieve, what it can’t, and what it will cost the patient. Tap a class, or tap the pathway itself.
The pain pathway
Tap the pathway — the injury, the nerve, the brain, or the descending brake.
Strike site — pick a class to light it up
And how do you measure it? Pain is whatever the person experiencing it says it is, existing whenever they say it does. Self-report is the gold standard — vital signs are not. Match the tool to the patient: 0–10 numeric · Wong-Baker FACES (young children) · FLACC (infants, nonverbal) · PAINAD (advanced dementia) · CPOT / BPS (intubated, critically ill). Then reassess after every intervention: about 15–30 min after IV, about 60 min after oral.
Four steps, six classestap a drug class — or tap the pathway