Article Text
Abstract
Background Pain has become one of the most common symptoms in care settings and even outpatients. Pain is experienced preoperatively and postoperatively, and it is also felt chronically in certain pathologies such as cancers. Nurses, like other health professionals, are at the heart of the management of pain and analgesics in hospitals.
Purpose The objective of our work is to make an inventory of nurses’ knowledge concerning the assessment and management of pain in hospitals in order to draw conclusions about the continuing education plans to be established for these nurses by hospital pharmacists.
Material and methods A questionnaire survey was conducted in nurses (n=30) by conducting a face-to-face interview. The data were entered and analysed with SPSS 13.0.
Results The majority (65%) are represented by resuscitating anaesthesiologist nurses, all of whom have already taken care of patients suffering from pain, mainly postoperative pain. Seventy per cent of participants reported that they had received training in pain management. Seventy per cent use the visual analogue scale (VAS) to evaluate the pain of their patients versus 30% who use other tools such as the Simple Numeric Scale (SNS) and Simple Verbal Scale (SVS). Sixty per cent say the 5 min duration is enough for them so they can assess a patient’s pain. Fifty five per cent of the participants have difficulties in assessing pain. Fifty five per cent find that material difficulties are an obstacle to the management of pain (dispensing of drugs, communication with patients, patient understanding of pain scale, confidence of physicians and patients). Eighty per cent of the participants express that there is no protocol for pain management at the service level. The majority of participants know that painkillers are used for pain management, but are not always aware of their availability at the hospital pharmacy and their adverse effects, negative indications and conditions of use.
Conclusion The results of the study show that a training programme should be put in place by hospital practitioners in order to better inform nurses about pain management and the handling of analgesics available in the hospital pharmacy.
References and/or Acknowledgements Acknowledgements to the Directorate of nurses
No conflict of interest