Samenvatting

Colleague van Dijk wrote an interesting article about the perception of pain scores, based on the relationship between two questionnaires and the results on these questionnaires of patients and caregivers (van Dijk et al., 2011). It is a nice article with a good description of the questionnaires and their background, the methodology and the results. The study shows that a group of caregivers have a slightly different score. No more and no less. Nothing is said about the actual treatment. In conclusion the author states that a potential risk of overtreatment may arise as decisions for treatment are solely based on NRS scores. The interpretation of the results is what we would like to discuss. The article seems to evoke some negative reactions in the Netherlands about the position of the acute pain nurse.