Pain is a Squirrely Thing

Disability and personal injury lawyers take note: “Pain is a squirrely thing.” Thus writes Elisabeth Rosenthal in her excellent recent piece published in The Atlantic, “Pain Doesn’t Belong on a Scale of Zero to 10.”

For lawyers trying to help clients communicate the severity of their pain, this article is another helpful reminder that we need to move beyond the 1-10 scale toward a more holistic description of how pain impacts clients’ day-to-day quality of life.

We need to encourage our clients to describe their difficulties at medical appointments in terms of their difficulties functioning. This type of reporting about what’s happening is far more meaningful for our cases – and more helpful for their treatment – than speculating about an arbitrary number that will always fail to capture how they feel subjectively.