Patient-centred approach in pain management: Solutions within reach?

Pain is a complex experience and subjective in nature. Pain can manifest in different ways in different people based on various factors, including emotional state, cultural context, and past experiences, due to its subjective nature. Pain management is not a unidirectional process but rather a dialogue, where health professionals can also intervene with their subjectivity. Is this subjectivity a problem? Not necessarily, provided it remains consistently patient-centred, which can be ensured through processes such as shared decision-making (SDM). In a dialogue, necessarily bidirectional, a form of symmetry can then be established, avoiding pity and while allowing, sometimes legitimate, concerns to take shape.