Patients' memories of painful medical treatments: real-time and retrospective evaluations of two minimally invasive procedures
Redelmeier and Kahneman took the peak-end finding into a hospital. Nearly three hundred patients undergoing colonoscopy or lithotripsy reported their pain in real time throughout the procedure, and afterwards judged how much pain the whole thing had involved. Their retrospective judgments were strongly predicted by two things: the most intense pain they experienced, and the pain during the final three minutes. Duration barely registered, and procedures that lasted much longer were not remembered as notably worse. The clinical significance is stated plainly: these memories are what patients use when deciding whether to return for a procedure they need. This is the study that moved the peak-end rule from film clips and cold water to real medical experience, and it is the reference this vault should use when the rule is applied to anything consequential.
Redelmeier and Kahneman took the peak-end finding into a hospital. Nearly three hundred patients undergoing colonoscopy or lithotripsy reported their pain in real time throughout the procedure, and afterwards judged how much pain the whole thing had involved. Their retrospective judgments were strongly predicted by two things: the most intense pain they experienced, and the pain during the final three minutes. Duration barely registered, and procedures that lasted much longer were not remembered as notably worse. The clinical significance is stated plainly: these memories are what patients use when deciding whether to return for a procedure they need. This is the study that moved the peak-end rule from film clips and cold water to real medical experience, and it is the reference this vault should use when the rule is applied to anything consequential.
Written from the abstract, OpenAlex.
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Reproduced as it was written when this source was checked, figures and all.
Observational. 154 colonoscopy patients and 133 lithotripsy patients. Procedures ran from 4 to 69 minutes.
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- Why You Remember the End of a Holiday and Not the Middle, Why We Come Back
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The source
https://doi.org/10.1016/0304-3959(96)02994-602994-6)
DOI: 10.1016/0304-3959(96)02994-6