Herdiary

Accurate measures of patients’ experiences of pain are difficult to capture, with most instruments tending to rely on a ‘snap-shot’ view. Better measures of pain are needed to increase the validity of research outcome measures and to help women communicate their symptoms better. We share our experience in implementing a new online pain diary, entitled ‘Herdiary’, and we explore the potential benefits of this instrument in patients with chronic pelvic pain; both in clinical practice and in research. Within ‘Herdiary’, patients score their pain from 0-10 on a daily basis, along with other information about their menstruation, time off from work or social activities. They also have the option to add comments for each pain score they provide. The software then creates a chart, which can be viewed by the patient and the clinician, indicating the severity and cyclicity of the pain. It also produces some descriptive statistics, including average pain score before and after any intervention.
Given the variable nature of pain, daily pain measurement should provide a more representative reading of the pain pattern and severity and avoids the need for retrospective reconstruction of pain experience by the patient. This not only provides a potentially better research tool but also, by actively involving patients in their care may be beneficial in achieving better pain control and improving patient satisfaction.