I ran a copy of this for our Practice Committee to consider revising the pain scale ... ;D

Alternatively, the doc told a story of a surgeon he knew who -- when following up with post-op pain -- might be greeted with a pain number of 12 or 15 on a 10-scale. His response? "Oh, then that means that I *owe* you some pain! Let's go out to the parking lot and work on that." One or two of those and they figured out that 10 really IS as high as it goes ...