Over the years, nurses, doctors and scientists have sought ways of assessing the impact of pain on patients. While many of the instruments devised have been extremely useful in identifying the nature and intensity of pain, defining the effect it has on people’s lives and (inceptions has proved much more problematic. Based on the work she canted out with patients suffering from chronic benign pain, Karen Rose explores one aspect of these effects - the feeling of isolation. By using a four-step anthropological approach to identify the impact of pain, she argues, nurses can arrive at a realistic and accurate assessment of how patients are coping.