1Professor, Department of Anaesthesiology, Rural Medical College, Loni, Ahmadnagar, Maharashtra
2PhD Student, Department of Orthopaedics, Mahatma Gandhi Missions’ Medical College, Aurangabad, Maharashtra
*Corresponding author: Dr Syed Shamim Razvi, PhD Student, Department of Orthopaedics, Mahatma Gandhi Missions ’Medical College, Aurangabad, Maharashtra
Online published on 25 January, 2018.
Nurses are the first responders to pain complaints of the patients and are the key persons in pain management as they spend a longer time with the patients. The present study was done to assess and compare the nurses’ role and attitudes in acute postoperative pain management in the tertiary hospitals of Maharashtra.
This was a questionnaire survey of nurses from tertiary teaching hospitals.
The survey showed that the main role of nurses was to administer analgesics as per physicians’ orders besides informing clinicians and counselling patients about postoperative pain. None of the institutes involved the nurses in managing epidurals and nerve blocks. 75% of nurses agreed that they counselled the patients regarding postoperative pain. 89.9% were aware that postoperative pain was most troublesome to the patients. Nurses predominantly used the intravenous and intramuscular route. Only 50% or less, nurses monitored the vital parameters in patients receiving potent analgesics. Pain scales were used by 36.4% of nurses and significantly more of them from hospitals with an Acute Pain Service (APS) (p=0.000). 70.5% of nurses pronounced that they had not received training in pain management and 87.5% of them agreed that a specialized pain service must be started.
Thus, the nurses in tertiary hospitals of Maharashtra played a limited role in acute postoperative pain management and lacked adequate pain education. Active role of nurses must be promoted by including pain education in nursing curriculum and by on-going training programs.
acute postoperative pain, acute pain service, analgesics
