- Foreword
- Preface
- Contributors
- 1 Relevance of Pain and Analgesia in Multicultural Societies
- 2 A Linguistic Approach for Understanding Pain in the Medical Encounter
- 3 Culture, Placebo, and Analgesia
- 4 Pain in Children across Cultures
- 5 Pain in Indian Culture
- 6 Insights on the Pain Experience in Mexican Americans
- 7 We Feel Pain Too
- 8 Allying with Chinese Parents for Enhanced Control of Pediatric Postoperative Pain
- 9 Understanding Anglo-Americans’ Culture, Pain, and Suffering
- 10 Cross-cultural Use and Validity of Pain Scales and Questionnaires—Norwegian Case Study
- 11 The Clinical Encounter
- 12 Social Contexts of Pain
- 13 Implicit and Explicit Ethnic Bias among Physicians
- 14 Ethnic Disparities in Emergency Department Pain Management
- 15 Patient-Provider Ethnic Concordance in Pain Control: Negotiating the Intangible Barrier
- 16 The Effect Of Ethnicity On Prescriptions For Patient-Controlled Analgesia For Post-operative Pain
- 17 Disparities in Health Care and Pain Management for Americans with Sickle Cell Disease
- 18 Unavailability of Pain Medicines in Minority Neighborhoods and Developing Countries
- 19 Disparities in Treatment of Cancer Pain in Ethnic Minority Patients
- 20 The Pain of Childbirth
- 21 Gender and Ethnic Differences in Responses to Pain and Its Treatment
- 22 Pain Management Among Chinese American Cancer Patients
- 23 Pain and Aging
- 24 Older African-Americans
- 25 Insensitivity to Pain
- 26 Opioid Requirements and Responses in Asians
- 27 Ethnicity and Psychopharmacotherapy in Pain
- 28 Integrative Medicine Approach to Chronic Pain
- 29 Physicians’ Perception of Pain as Related to Empathy, Sympathy and the Mirror-Neuron System
- 30 Pain, Culture, and Pathways to Care
- 31 Culture, Pharmacogenomics, and Personalized Analgesia
- Index
(p. 9) A Linguistic Approach for Understanding Pain in the Medical Encounter
- Chapter:
- (p. 9) A Linguistic Approach for Understanding Pain in the Medical Encounter
- Author(s):
Lise Bouchard
- DOI:
- 10.1093/med/9780199768875.003.0002
Physicians are confronted daily with the task of interpreting their patients’ narration, making pain-related speech a recurrent concern in the medical encounter. Yet, despite the important role of language and culture in the representation of pain, few studies have tackled the topic. In this chapter we examine pain through a linguistic-anthropological lens. We discuss the pain experience, its expression and description across cultures. Using examples from different regions of the world, we illustrate how linguistic factors interfering in doctor-patient communication can lead to problems of interpretation and unfavorable clinical outcomes. Finally, we suggest actions that can be taken in the clinical setting to optimize the understanding of patients’ pain description using basic linguistic tools and in so doing improve the quality of care.
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- Foreword
- Preface
- Contributors
- 1 Relevance of Pain and Analgesia in Multicultural Societies
- 2 A Linguistic Approach for Understanding Pain in the Medical Encounter
- 3 Culture, Placebo, and Analgesia
- 4 Pain in Children across Cultures
- 5 Pain in Indian Culture
- 6 Insights on the Pain Experience in Mexican Americans
- 7 We Feel Pain Too
- 8 Allying with Chinese Parents for Enhanced Control of Pediatric Postoperative Pain
- 9 Understanding Anglo-Americans’ Culture, Pain, and Suffering
- 10 Cross-cultural Use and Validity of Pain Scales and Questionnaires—Norwegian Case Study
- 11 The Clinical Encounter
- 12 Social Contexts of Pain
- 13 Implicit and Explicit Ethnic Bias among Physicians
- 14 Ethnic Disparities in Emergency Department Pain Management
- 15 Patient-Provider Ethnic Concordance in Pain Control: Negotiating the Intangible Barrier
- 16 The Effect Of Ethnicity On Prescriptions For Patient-Controlled Analgesia For Post-operative Pain
- 17 Disparities in Health Care and Pain Management for Americans with Sickle Cell Disease
- 18 Unavailability of Pain Medicines in Minority Neighborhoods and Developing Countries
- 19 Disparities in Treatment of Cancer Pain in Ethnic Minority Patients
- 20 The Pain of Childbirth
- 21 Gender and Ethnic Differences in Responses to Pain and Its Treatment
- 22 Pain Management Among Chinese American Cancer Patients
- 23 Pain and Aging
- 24 Older African-Americans
- 25 Insensitivity to Pain
- 26 Opioid Requirements and Responses in Asians
- 27 Ethnicity and Psychopharmacotherapy in Pain
- 28 Integrative Medicine Approach to Chronic Pain
- 29 Physicians’ Perception of Pain as Related to Empathy, Sympathy and the Mirror-Neuron System
- 30 Pain, Culture, and Pathways to Care
- 31 Culture, Pharmacogenomics, and Personalized Analgesia
- Index
