Assignment: Treatment Options for Clinical Pain

In this assignment, you will exercise critical thinking skills. Remember to suspend judgment while inquiring into multiple aspects of the issue. Answering the questions requires application of problem solving skills and methods, and your recommendations must be derived from your own evaluative decisions.
• Resources: Ch. 12 of Health Psychology
• Consider the following three cases of clinical pain:
o Case 1: Various types of pain from a below-the-knee amputation resulting from diabetic neuropathy
o Case 2: Acute pain from an abdominal hysterectomy
o Case 3: Chronic headaches (non-migraine)
• Use information from Ch. 12 of the text and other sources to help you comment on whether surgical, pharmaceutical, behavioral, and cognitive treatment methods would or would not be considered appropriate for each of the three clinical pain cases. Discuss and defend your answers.
• Recommend an appropriate pain treatment plan employing one or more specific methods for each individual case. Describe each plan and provide support for your recommendations.
• Discuss the benefits of having all four (surgical, pharmaceutical, behavioral, and cognitive) pain treatment methods available to chronic pain patients in a traditional hospital.
• Compile your answers in a 1,200- to 1,400-word paper in APA format. Use a minimum of two sources besides the text.