Do veterinary assessors agree when scoring a dog's pain?

Details

Several pain scoring systems have been validated for dogs, but high variation between observers may prevent pain from being adequately assessed. This study aimed to evaluate agreement using the CMPS-SF among veterinary students, veterinary nurses, veterinary surgeons, and European College of Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia (ECVAA) diplomates.

In this prospective observational study, 45 client-owned dogs presented to a teaching hospital were enrolled. All dogs were pain-scored in vivo, and videos of the assessments were subsequently evaluated by 20 assessors, five from each group. Researchers compared mean scores between groups and calculated intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) to assess agreement within groups and agreement between group average scores. They also evaluated the intervention point at which dogs were judged to need additional analgesia.

Overall agreement was poor (ICC = 0.494). Nurses had the best agreement between observers (ICC = 0.656), followed by ECVAA diplomates (ICC = 0.540), veterinary surgeons (ICC = 0.478), and veterinary students (ICC = 0.432). The best agreement between groups was between veterinary surgeons and nurses (ICC = 0.951) and between ECVAA diplomates and nurses (ICC = 0.951). Students were more likely than the other groups to determine that additional analgesia was required. The authors noted that pain assessment is key to animal welfare and that training should be reinforced to improve consistency.