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Pain Management Nursing

Decent Essays

Pain management is an essential component to patient care and nursing procedures. Recognizing the detrimental effects of unrelieved pain, The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JACHO) has recommended standards of pain management, especially with regard to assessment, monitoring and treatment (Harsoor, 2011). Research shows pain too often goes untreated, undertreated, or poorly assessed. In some settings, it has been found that pain has gone undertreated in up to 80% of patients (Walid et al, 2008). Children, the elderly, cancer patients, and postoperative patients are all populations that are at an increased risk for pain and subsequently poor pain management. Pain has a significant effect on a person’s mental status, …show more content…

A comprehensive and continuous pain assessment by the nursing staff contributes to early intervention of pain, decreased severity of acute pain, and may also prevent long-term effects (Vallerand et al, 2011). A comprehensive pain assessment should include detailed subjective questions, especially questions pertaining to pain intensity. Pain was given the title “the fifth vital sign” in 1999 by the Joint Commission (Glowacki, 2015). As a vital sign, pain must be carefully evaluated during assessment just as the other four vital signs are. Assessment of chronic pain should occur on a regular basis using a standardized method that can be translated to all nursing staff (Jablonski and Ersek, 2009). In a study conducted by Jablonski and Ersek (2009), findings revealed only 32% of the long-term care patients in the study were assessed weekly for pain. The same study also indicated adherence to evidence based guidelines for pain management was not consistently observed in documentation. Critical subjective pain characteristics assessed within the last 30 days were left out of 93% of patient charts. Jablonski and Ersek’s (2009) findings were consistent with several other studies of similar topic. These results provide confirmatory evidence that the assessment is the basis for a successful and effective pain management plan and is imperative to provide …show more content…

This falls back on the topic of educating nurses in pain management to assure evidence-based practice is used in association with the pain assessment. It appears nurses may only receive superficial exposure of pain education making them poorly equipped to control patient pain. As of 2013 only 1,672 registered nurses in the United States were certified in pain management (Glowacki, 2015). Patients should not be left in pain because of the registered nurse’s lack of knowledge. The optimal pain assessment should provide an overflow of information to make pain intervention decisions and provide optimal pain relief (Carlson,

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