Pain vs. Suffering
June 14, 2019 / Reid M. Jacobs, APHSW-C, MSW
Not everyone with pain suffers and not all those who suffer have pain. That sounds wrong, doesn’t it? The nature of pain and suffering seem almost identical, and the terms are often used interchangeably. However, there are some important distinctions between the two.
Pain has many aspects beyond the physical sensation, all of which can contribute to a sense of suffering. Pain is typically defined as “an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage.” (International Association for the Study of Pain). In palliative and hospice care we often focus on total pain which is the suffering that encompasses all of a person’s physical, psychological, social, spiritual, and practical struggles.
Still, suffering isn’t a universal experience for pain. Suffering is a subjective experience that is unique to the individual and can change over time. Several factors like culture, religion, and personal beliefs, can change a person’s response to and perception of pain.
Pain can also take on meaning. For example, a person with cancer may experience severe pain from the tumor or the cancer treatments. Feeling the pain from cancer can make someone think that a tumor is growing and the cancer advancing. Someone else may feel the same pain, but take it as a sign that the treatment is working. It’s a signal that their body is fighting, and the cancer is dying. These two different experiences of pain greatly influence the perception of suffering that the person experiences.
For some people, pain becomes a religious experience. They may see the pain as atonement for sins or wrongdoings earlier in their life. For others, it becomes a closer connection to God. One of my clients explained, “my Jesus suffered. Am I any better than Him that I shouldn’t suffer?” She did use the term suffer, but her experience transcended the suffering. She recounted the suffering inflicted on Christ in the days leading up to and including crucifixion. Through her suffering, she felt closer to God and could better appreciate the sacrifice Christ made.
So, do we let people stay in pain if they aren’t suffering? Well, this gets to the heart of the palliative and hospice philosophy. Our goal is to take a patient-centered approach to manage pain, symptoms, and improve quality of life. This means that we look to the patient to understand their priorities. Most people want pain relief. For these patients, we work hard to get rid of the pain, and we’re good at doing that.
If someone does not want to treat the pain, however, we will focus on other ways to support them. This may include emotional and spiritual support to help them make sense of the pain, address suffering, and cope with their situation. We may seek to understand why the person doesn’t want to treat the pain, to ensure they aren’t being coerced into refusing pain medications or misunderstanding the treatment options.
Still, there are some patients who want pain control, but want to avoid using opioid medications. We have good alternatives for these situations too, such as mindfulness meditation, guided imagery, music therapy and other complementary therapies.
The focus of palliative and hospice care is to reduce suffering and improve quality of life. One way we do this is by relieving pain, but it’s not the only way. We tailor our interventions to each person, their unique needs, and their goals. We will champion our patients’ decisions for pain management and all aspects of care. And if they change their mind, we will support them with that as well.
Faith and Hope Hospice
We firmly believe that the internet should be available and accessible to anyone, and are committed to providing a website that is accessible to the widest possible audience, regardless of circumstance and ability.
To fulfill this, we aim to adhere as strictly as possible to the World Wide Web Consortium’s (W3C) Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.1 (WCAG 2.1) at the AA level. These guidelines explain how to make web content accessible to people with a wide array of disabilities. Complying with those guidelines helps us ensure that the website is accessible to all people: blind people, people with motor impairments, visual impairment, cognitive disabilities, and more.
This website utilizes various technologies that are meant to make it as accessible as possible at all times. We utilize an accessibility interface that allows persons with specific disabilities to adjust the website’s UI (user interface) and design it to their personal needs.
Additionally, the website utilizes an AI-based application that runs in the background and optimizes its accessibility level constantly. This application remediates the website’s HTML, adapts Its functionality and behavior for screen-readers used by the blind users, and for keyboard functions used by individuals with motor impairments.
If you’ve found a malfunction or have ideas for improvement, we’ll be happy to hear from you. You can reach out to the website’s operators by using the following email
Our website implements the ARIA attributes (Accessible Rich Internet Applications) technique, alongside various different behavioral changes, to ensure blind users visiting with screen-readers are able to read, comprehend, and enjoy the website’s functions. As soon as a user with a screen-reader enters your site, they immediately receive a prompt to enter the Screen-Reader Profile so they can browse and operate your site effectively. Here’s how our website covers some of the most important screen-reader requirements, alongside console screenshots of code examples:
Screen-reader optimization: we run a background process that learns the website’s components from top to bottom, to ensure ongoing compliance even when updating the website. In this process, we provide screen-readers with meaningful data using the ARIA set of attributes. For example, we provide accurate form labels; descriptions for actionable icons (social media icons, search icons, cart icons, etc.); validation guidance for form inputs; element roles such as buttons, menus, modal dialogues (popups), and others. Additionally, the background process scans all the website’s images and provides an accurate and meaningful image-object-recognition-based description as an ALT (alternate text) tag for images that are not described. It will also extract texts that are embedded within the image, using an OCR (optical character recognition) technology. To turn on screen-reader adjustments at any time, users need only to press the Alt+1 keyboard combination. Screen-reader users also get automatic announcements to turn the Screen-reader mode on as soon as they enter the website.
These adjustments are compatible with all popular screen readers, including JAWS and NVDA.
Keyboard navigation optimization: The background process also adjusts the website’s HTML, and adds various behaviors using JavaScript code to make the website operable by the keyboard. This includes the ability to navigate the website using the Tab and Shift+Tab keys, operate dropdowns with the arrow keys, close them with Esc, trigger buttons and links using the Enter key, navigate between radio and checkbox elements using the arrow keys, and fill them in with the Spacebar or Enter key.Additionally, keyboard users will find quick-navigation and content-skip menus, available at any time by clicking Alt+1, or as the first elements of the site while navigating with the keyboard. The background process also handles triggered popups by moving the keyboard focus towards them as soon as they appear, and not allow the focus drift outside it.
Users can also use shortcuts such as “M” (menus), “H” (headings), “F” (forms), “B” (buttons), and “G” (graphics) to jump to specific elements.
We aim to support the widest array of browsers and assistive technologies as possible, so our users can choose the best fitting tools for them, with as few limitations as possible. Therefore, we have worked very hard to be able to support all major systems that comprise over 95% of the user market share including Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera and Microsoft Edge, JAWS and NVDA (screen readers).
Despite our very best efforts to allow anybody to adjust the website to their needs. There may still be pages or sections that are not fully accessible, are in the process of becoming accessible, or are lacking an adequate technological solution to make them accessible. Still, we are continually improving our accessibility, adding, updating and improving its options and features, and developing and adopting new technologies. All this is meant to reach the optimal level of accessibility, following technological advancements. For any assistance, please reach out to
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