In the OPQRST mnemonic, what does the letter S represent?

• A. Suffering level
• B. Severity
• C. Sensory level
• D. Signal strength

Answer: (B)

In the OPQRST mnemonic, the S stands for severity—the intensity of the patient’s pain. After you’ve covered onset, provocation/palliation, and quality, you ask how bad the pain is at that moment, usually using a simple 0 to 10 scale (0 meaning no pain, 10 meaning the worst imaginable pain). This rating helps you gauge how much pain is affecting the patient, track changes over time, and determine how aggressively to treat or escalate care.

Suffering level isn’t the standard term used here; the focus is on how intense the pain feels. Likewise, sensory level and signal strength aren’t used to describe pain intensity in this context. The key idea is that severity quantifies the pain’s intensity to guide clinical decisions.