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You are here: Home / Arthritis and joint disorders / Faces Pain Scale – Revised and Wong Baker Pain Rating Scale

Faces Pain Scale – Revised and Wong Baker Pain Rating Scale

Dr Arun Pal Singh ·

Last Updated on February 9, 2025

The Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R) is a scale used for a self-report measure of pain intensity. This scale was developed for children and has been adapted from the Faces Pain Scale.

It can also be used in adult people who are unable to use a numerical rating scale like a visual analog scale. It is particularly recommended for use in younger children as numerical self-rating scales (0-10) can be used with most children over 8 years of age.

Interestingly, the Faces pain scale-revised shows a close linear relationship with visual analog pain scales across the age range of 4-16 years.

Contents hide
1 Scale
2 Faces Pain Scale
3 Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale
4 References

Scale

The scale consists of six faces as shown below which vary in gestures.  The leftmost face shows no pain.  The faces show more and more pain from left to right and the rightmost face shows extreme pain.

Faces Pain Scale Revised
FPS-Revised

The following instructions are given to the child –

These faces show how much something can hurt. This face [the assessor points to the left-most face] shows no pain. The faces show more and more pain [point to each from left to right] up to this one [point to right-most face] – it shows very much pain. Point to the face that shows how much you hurt [right now].

Beginning from left each face is given a score of 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, or 10.

Thus score  ‘0’ = ‘no pain’ and score  ’10’ = ‘very much pain.’

This scale is intended to measure how children feel inside, not how their face looks.

Faces Pain Scale

It is the original scale from which the Revised scale is derived. The revision was done so that the scale could be accommodated on 0-10 metric.

The original Faces Pain scale consisted of seven faces instead of six and the scores were 0,1,2,3,4,5,6.

Here is an image of the original Faces Pain Scale.

Faces Pain Scale
Faces Pain Scale

Score ‘0’ signified no pain and score ‘6’ signified maximum pain.

Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale

It is a similar scale, is named Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale, and was developed by Donna Wong and Connie Baker.

This scale shows six faces in total.

The first face is a happy face at 0 which represents “no hurt”.

The last face is a crying face with tears at 10 which means hurt worst.

The incremental value of 2 is added for each face as the scale moves from 0-10.

Wong Baker FACES pain rating scale
Wong-Baker FACES pain rating scale

Wong-Baker scale is a useful pain scale for children and is also appropriate for certain patients with an inability to count and impaired brain function.

References

Garra G, Singer AJ, Taira BR, Chohan J, Cardoz H, Chisena E, Thode HC Jr. Validation of the Wong-Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale in pediatric emergency department patients. Acad Emerg Med. 2010 Jan;17(1):50-4. doi: 10.1111/j.1553-2712.2009.00620.x. Epub 2009 Dec 9. [link]

Arthritis and joint disorders This article has been medically reviewed by Dr. Arun Pal Singh, MBBS, MS (Orthopedics)

About Dr Arun Pal Singh

Dr. Arun Pal Singh is a practicing orthopedic surgeon with over 20 years of clinical experience in orthopedic surgery, specializing in trauma care, fracture management, and spine disorders.

BoneAndSpine.com is dedicated to providing structured, detailed, and clinically grounded orthopedic knowledge for medical students, healthcare professionals, patients and serious learners.
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Dr. Arun Pal Singh is an orthopedic surgeon with over 20 years of experience in trauma and spine care. He founded Bone & Spine to simplify medical knowledge for patients and professionals alike. Read More…

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