U.S. — The American Medical Association has officially added "The View" to its pain scale to help patients better understand what is meant by the term "worst pain possible."
"In that case, I guess my pain is a nine," said trauma patient Bill Reynolds, whose femur was currently lodged in his own spleen. "Please change the channel."
With "The View" as a comparison, the pain rating of horrific injuries has fallen dramatically. "Sure, my skull is shattered - but that seems about half as bad as watching 'The View', so I'll go with a five," said car wreck survivor Glenn Higgins. "In retrospect, I really oversold how bad it hurt when my arm got caught in that wood-chipper. That was more like an eight."
For years, frustrated clinicians have dealt with errant public understanding of what true, ten-out-of-ten pain feels like. "If you aren't willing to gouge your own eyes out to make the pain stop, it's not a ten," said emergency physician Dr. Kim Bradford. "It's hard to communicate to patients what we mean by that kind of agony, other than watching 'The View'. It's been a really helpful update to our pain scale."
At publishing time, the AMA was considering changing the number nine slot to "listening to Kamala Harris laugh".
BIG NEWS: We made a movie, and you can watch the trailer NOW: