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Background: The simplistic nature of often-used pain assessment tools can lead providers toward inadequate assessment, leading to unclear communication during encounters with chronic pain patients.

Objectives: To think critically about pain assessment methods and how they might affect the doctor-patient relationship, and to explore drawing techniques while doing it.

Methods: We will look to stories from The Hysteria Project (a one-on-one collage and storytelling project about gynecological disorders) as examples of patients where pain assessment was lacking. We will then discuss different pain assessment tools, including the Numeric Rating Scale, the Migraine Quality of Life Assessment, and the McGill Questionnaire, to understand how they assess different aspects of pain, and how they can be useful both to providers to find out information and to patients to come in to appointments better prepared. Using modified embodied drawing techniques crossed with tools from cartoons and graphic novels, we will make drawings based on the descriptors in the McGill Questionnaire. There will be a quick debriefing to show the drawings we’ve made (with consent!) and discuss what we’ve learned. In total, about 2 hours, for no more than 10 people.

Results: Drawing and group discussion about pain assessment can illuminate aspects of the doctor-provider relationship and lead to providers asking better questions, and patients being able to communicate more directly and successfully about their bodies.