Development and Initial Validation of the PEG, a Three-item Scale Assessing Pain Intensity and Interference
| Resource Type: | Tool |
| Year: | 2009 |
| Organization/Source: | Journal of General Internal Medicine |
| Tags: Chronic Pain, Evidence, Safe Prescribing, Screening and Assessment | |
This study provides a three-item PEG (Pain average, interference with Enjoyment of life, and interference with General activity) assessment scale and describes its reliability. It concludes that there is strong initial evidence for reliability, construct validity, and responsiveness of the PEG among primary care and other ambulatory clinic patients. The PEG may be a practical and useful tool to improve assessment and monitoring of chronic pain in primary care.
The PEG is referenced in the 2022 CDC Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain: “Before opioid therapy is initiated for subacute or chronic pain, clinicians should determine with patients how functional benefit will be evaluated and establish treatment goals. … Clinicians can assess and then follow function, pain severity, and quality of life using tools such as the three-item PEG (Pain average, interference with Enjoyment of life, and interference with General activity) assessment scale.”
The PEG pain screening tool can be found in the article (Figure 1), linked below. It can also be found here.