Understanding the relationship between pain & dementia is complex and poses a challenge to care managers daily. This paper sets out to discuss the main issues with assessing pain for those living with dementia and how these can be overcome.

Self-reporting pain levels is globally accepted as the most reliable method of assessing pain. But what happens when you can’t rely on someone’s ability to self-report? This formulates one of the main challenges of assessing pain levels for people living with cognitive impairments such as dementia. In this paper, we discuss the challenges of assessing pain for people with dementia, and discover how these can be overcome with assistive technology.