Professor Research Intensive Care for children at Erasmus Medical Center
The necessity of pain
When something hurts we tend to just take an aspirin and go on with whatever we were doing. Pain is something we prefer to avoid. We consider pain as something amiss, as unnatural instead of useful and part of human life.
Dick Tibboel is specialized in pain. He says: ‘An embryo already can feel pain.’ Pain is functional, it tells us how we feel. When in pain we don’t feel good, without pain we know we are fine. According to the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) pain needs to be regarded as a warning sign. It indicates existing or upcoming damage. That is why signaling pain is important to doctors. People are expected to pay attention when they feel pain. But not everybody is able to indicate it when he or she is in pain. Children under three years of age for example, or mentally handicapped people as well as very old people are not capable of effectively communicating pain to doctors. Yet these are very vulnerable groups.
Tibboel has become an expert in recognizing bodily signs that indicate pain. That requires that pain can be measured, so a scale needed to be developed. But people differ as to how and when pain is experienced. Hurt does not have the same effect on everybody. A lot of research still has to be done before pain can be adequately assessed.
Professor Dick Tibboel (1952) studied at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is head of the Department of pediatric surgical intensive care of the Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam and since 2005 he is the supervisor of pain research at the Intensive Care Unit for children at Erasmus MC. He is also involved in the Pain Expertise Centre in Rotterdam.
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Dick Tibboel
Professor Research Intensive Care for children at Erasmus Medical Center
When something hurts we tend to just take an aspirin and go on with whatever we were doing. Pain is something we prefer to avoid. We consider pain as something amiss, as unnatural instead of useful and part of human life.
Dick Tibboel is specialized in pain. He says: ‘An embryo already can feel pain.’ Pain is functional, it tells us how we feel. When in pain we don’t feel good, without pain we know we are fine. According to the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) pain needs to be regarded as a warning sign. It indicates existing or upcoming damage. That is why signaling pain is important to doctors. People are expected to pay attention when they feel pain. But not everybody is able to indicate it when he or she is in pain. Children under three years of age for example, or mentally handicapped people as well as very old people are not capable of effectively communicating pain to doctors. Yet these are very vulnerable groups.
Tibboel has become an expert in recognizing bodily signs that indicate pain. That requires that pain can be measured, so a scale needed to be developed. But people differ as to how and when pain is experienced. Hurt does not have the same effect on everybody. A lot of research still has to be done before pain can be adequately assessed.
Professor Dick Tibboel (1952) studied at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam. He is head of the Department of pediatric surgical intensive care of the Sophia Children’s Hospital in Rotterdam and since 2005 he is the supervisor of pain research at the Intensive Care Unit for children at Erasmus MC. He is also involved in the Pain Expertise Centre in Rotterdam.