A woman is receiving physical therapy after surgery to repair a hip fracture. She tells the therapist before therapy begins that she expects therapy to be very painful. She rates her pain as 1 on a scale of 1 to 10 before therapy. Three minutes into the treatment session, the patient complains of excruciating pain rated as 10 and says she cannot tolerate exercise any longer. The therapist is concerned about the amount of pain because severe pain is not expected during that form of exercise. The therapist considers the patient could be experiencing:

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

The nocebo effect occurs when negative expectations of the patient cause symptoms such as pain to be experienced more intensely, which seems to be the case here since the patient anticipated the therapy to be very painful before it began.

A Woman Is Receiving Physical Therapy After Surgery to Repair