The American Pain Society cites the failure of health care providers to routinely assess pain and pain relief as the most common reason for unrelieved pain in US hospitals. Lack of knowledge on the part of nurses about pain and its treatment is one of the major barriers to achieving comfort for those in pain. Thus, the purpose of this descriptive study was to determine the pain management knowledge of hospital-based nurses in a rural Appalachian area. The nonpurposive sample consisted of 123 registered nurses. The questionnaire consisted of three sections: demographic items and two instruments designed to measure knowledge of opioid classification and pain management. The overall pain management knowledge score was 67.4%. The findings indicate a knowledge deficit specifically related to the behavioural indicators of pain, classification of opioid analgesics, properties of opioid analgesics and adjuvant medications, and incidence of addiction. This sample of rural nurses demonstrates similar pain management knowledge compared to the reported scores of urban nurses. These results may serve as the impetus to develop strategies to decrease the barriers to effective pain management. Further education about pain management is warranted.
Significant Findings/Events/accomplishments Publication quality results were obtained for several experiments and materials systems including: (i) Patterning and smoothening of sapphire surfaces by energetic Ar + ions. Grazing Incidence Small Angle X-ray Scattering (GISAXS) experiments were performed in the system at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) X21 beamline. Ar + ions in the energy range from 300 eV to 1000 eV were used to produce ripples on the surfaces of single-crystal sapphire. It was found that the ripple wavelength varies strongly with the angle of incidence of the ions, which increase significantly as the angle from normal is varied from 55° to 35°. A smooth region was found for ion incidence less than 35° away from normal incidence. In this region a strong smoothening mechanism with strength proportional to the second derivative of the height of the surface (∝∇ 2 h) was found to be responsible for the effect. The discovery of this phase transition between stable and unstable regimes as the angle of incidence is varied has also stimulated new work by other groups in the field. (ii) Growth of Ge quantum dots on Si(100) and (111). We discovered the formation of quantum wires on 4° misoriented Si(111) using real-time GISAXS during the deposition of Ge. The results represent the first time-resolved GISAXS study of Ge quantum dot formation. (iii) Sputter deposition of amorphous thin films and multilayers composed of WSi 2 and Si. WSi 2 /Si multilayers are of current interest because the multilayer deposition facility at the Advanced Photon Source is presently making Multilayer Laue Lenses (MLLs) from WSi 2 /Si multilayers. This appears to be the leading approach to produced low nanometer scale
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