Desenvolvimento de avaliação sistemática e padronizada da dor através de aplicativo para dispositivos móveis

Abstract

As a symptom par excellence, pain has valuable importance in medicine, being an important diagnostic tool. However, pain is a subjective symptom, in which only the pati ent can accurately report its intensity. The only way to assess pain is by actively asking patients or observing the pain, if they do not have the means to understand or respond to the question. The time evaluators take to do so is directly proportional to the number of patients evaluated. Many patients have their pain underestimated to this day, much because of the workload of the professionals or difficulty to contact them if they are monitored outside the hospital environment. The main goal of the presen t research was to develop an application for mobile devices capable of assisting in the remote monitoring of pain intensity and assessing usability. Method: The application for mobile devices was designed from a detailed study of pain assessment. Afterward , a heuristic evaluation was performed by five pain experts, with at least five years experience in this field, selected in different anesthesia services in Fortaleza city. After the heuristic evaluation, possible corrections were made. Finally, the applic ation was submitted to the usability test using the System Usability Scale (SUS) test, and a oral interview was applied to evaluate its usefulness. This test was performed to fifteen healthcare professionals selected in the hospital complex of the Federal University of Ceará and fifteen patients treated by them, potential end users of the product. Results: The application was developed following the sketch done by the authors and was approved by the experts in the heuristic evaluation, with few intervention s needed. The usability was proven by the SUS test and by the comments of the final users. The application obtained a mean score of 82.33 by the applying SUS test, which represents an excellent classification in the scale developed by Bangor et al. Conclus ion: The usability test results indicate that the application is easy to use by end users, both healthcare professionals and patients, showing great potential to be an important tool in the clinical practice of health professionals of various specialties Keywords: Pain; Pain measurement; Mobile Applications