Approaching acute pain in emergency settings: European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM) guidelines—part 1: assessment

Abstract

Pain management is a vital component of patient care, particularly in the emergency setting. Pain can hinder the opportunities to treat and manage pain-causing conditions and remains one of the primary reasons patients seek emergency medical care, yet despite this, pain often remains under-acknowledged, under-assessed and undertreated. Despite the importance of effective management of acute pain, there are currently no well-defined emergency medicine guidelines at a European level to support healthcare professionals in achieving this goal. The European Society for Emergency Medicine (EUSEM) identified this as a significant unmet requirement, for improving day-to-day patient management and for providing guidance to trainees and non-emergency medicine physicians. Under the auspices of EUSEM, a programme—the European Pain Initiative—was launched with the aim of providing information, advice and guidance on pain management in pre-hospital and emergency department settings. Search terms were developed to search MEDLINE, Cochrane database, Google Scholar and EMBASE online databases to return English language articles published in the last 10 years. A working package of reference materials was evaluated against inclusion and exclusion criteria and levels of evidence ascribed. A short survey was developed by the European Pain Initiative Steering Committee for completion by EUSEM members to evaluate actual clinical practice. A working document of > 800 publications was identified for further review and evaluation against agreed criteria. Some further publications were included by the Steering Committee to explore older literature for long-established analgesics, or newly emergent literature that was considered important for inclusion but was identified as the guideline development was underway. This article provides the methodology used to inform the guidelines, including survey results of EUSEM members on assessment and treatment of acute pain. A companion manuscript in this issue presents an evidence-based review and recommendations for individualised evaluation of acute pain in patients in emergency settings.