OAKBROOK TERRACE, IL – The Joint Commission believes that when a patient has “20 out of 10 pain” it isn’t the patient’s fault, it’s the scale’s fault. That is why the Joint Commission is mandating a new pain scale that ranges from 0 to infinity to replace the old Wong-Baker Pain Scale. It is called the Strong-Faker Pain Scale.
“A common complaint on patient satisfaction surveys was that a pain score maximum of 10 was too limiting,” said Joint Commission spokesperson F. Ken Aye. “All too often patients had 34 out of 10 pain, 20 out of 10, 96 out of 10 pain. We realized they must really be in pain, so the problem isn’t the patients. It’s the scale!”
According to Aye, patients can now rightfully express their pain score well knowing that it will be within the limits of the pain scale, since the maximum score is now infinity. Health care providers are grateful for the change.
“I used to think patients were malingering, drug-seeking when they said a number greater than 10,” said emergency medicine physician Ryan Gullible, who now dispenses free IV Dilaudid out of an oversized picnic basket. “But since any number is less than infinity and infinite pain is real, then any numbered pain is real and thus must be treated with Dilaudid.”
The Joint Commission hopes to see patient satisfaction increase, which, in Aye’s words, is “all that really matters in the first place, right? If a patient has pain that is 1 million out of infinity, that patient needs his pain to be taken 1 million times more seriously.” When asked what he thought about the opioid epidemic, he shrugged his shoulders and responded, “What’s that?”
According to sources close to GomerBlog, the first patient to be evaluated under the new Strong-Faker Pain Scale has been asked what his pain was on a scale from 0 to infinity, to which he responded while FaceTime-ing with his friends, “It’s like infinity plus one… out of infinity.”
