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Chest Pain Assessment: What to Do When Your Patient Has Chest Pain

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One of the most important skills available to the healthcare worker in this situation is the ability to perform an accurate pain assessment to determine whether the pain is cardiac in nature. Just as important, is the ability of the healthcare worker to conduct this assessment in a calm and controlled manner.

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What is this article about?

Whether your patient is 25 or 85-years-old, when they report chest pain, you should always treat it seriously. Maybe the cause of the chest pain is nothing more than indigestion, a muscle strain or some other innocuous problem. However, chest pain can potentially point to a more serious and life-threatening cause, such as an acute myocardial infarction (AMI).

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Ausmed
Editorial Team
Ausmed’s editorial team is committed to providing high-quality, well-researched and reputable education to our users, free of any commercial bias or conflict of interest. All education produced by Ausmed is developed in consultation with healthcare professionals and undergoes a rigorous review process to ensure the relevancy of all healthcare information and updates to changes in practice. If you have identified an issue with the education offered by Ausmed or wish to submit feedback to Ausmed's editorial team, please email ausmed@ausmed.com.au with your concerns.
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Lynda Lampert
Lynda is a registered nurse with three years experience on a busy surgical floor in a city hospital. She graduated with an Associates degree in Nursing from Mercyhurst College Northeast in 2007 and lives in Erie, Pennsylvania in the United States. In her work, she took care of patients post operatively from open heart surgery, immediately post-operatively from gastric bypass, gastric banding surgery and post abdominal surgery. She also dealt with patient populations that experienced active chest pain, congestive heart failure, end stage renal disease, uncontrolled diabetes and a variety of other chronic, mental and surgical conditions.
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Joan Macgregor
12 Apr 2023
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Very good
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Nina Algie
14 Apr 2020
Very informative and a good read.
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Taleah Niesler
17 Apr 2023
Good review
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Dominique Domingues
17 May 2023
great info!
JM
Jackie Medwin
02 May 2023
Registered Nurse
very good article
MM
Moira Macleod
09 Dec 2021
valued
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Alex Jones
21 Jul 2021
Helpful educational
MR
Margaret Rich
12 May 2021
Straight forward and informative.
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Laura Stojoski
01 Apr 2021
Resource was great and the videos included reinforced all context.
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Magie Pasion
18 Feb 2021
It is brief, comprehensible, and knowledge impacting, which I believe would be very useful in my workplace and wherever I'm into.
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