Final answer:
The nurse forms a concept based on her subjective experience with pain, which cannot be objectively measured like signs but rather is reported as a symptom. Pain perception involves physical, emotional, and cognitive factors, with possible delays in consciousness due to neural processing times and complexities like referred pain.
Step-by-step explanation:
A nurse forming a mental image of pain based on her own experiences is creating a concept. This concept reflects her personal understanding or interpretation of what pain feels like. In healthcare, it's important to differentiate between the knowledge by acquaintance (the sensation itself) and related inferences (propositions about sensations), such as inferring that the air temperature must be dropping because one feels cold. The perception of physical sensations, like pain, is subjective and constitutes a internal experience that patients report, making it a symptom which cannot be clinically confirmed or objectively measured as signs can be.
Pain is a complex phenomenon that involves not only physical sensations but also has cognitive, emotional, and social components. This subjective experience of pain is often measured using scales, like the Wong-Baker Faces pain-rating scale, or physiological indicators such as skin conductance fluctuations. Furthermore, the processing of pain sensations involves their propagation to the cerebral cortex, a journey that can introduce delays in conscious perception. The concept of referred pain also adds complexity to how pain is perceived and interpreted, as visceral sensations can project to regions distant from the involved organ, such as shoulder pain during a heart attack.