Health care workers and ICU pain perceptions.

Objective: Our study examined the effect of health care workers' personal characteristics on how they perceive and intend to treat patients' pain in the intensive care unit. Though pain perceptions have been well established from the patient's perspective, less is known about how variations in health care workers may affect their perceptions of pain.

Design: This study consisted of a 28-item questionnaire distributed to 122 medical staff personnel over a 12-month period.