Quality Pain Management in Adult Hospitalized Patients: A Concept Evaluation

Abstract

QPM is a multifaceted concept that remains poorly defined in the literature. Studies should aim to develop valid, reliable, and operational measures of the pillars of QPM and to look at the relationship among these factors. Authors need to state how they define and what aspects of QPM they are measuring.

Factors Relating to Nurses’ Knowledge and Attitudes Regarding Pain Management in Inpatients

“…Studies report that over 50% of patients in Spain experience pain while in the hospital setting (Sepúlveda-S anchez et al, 2016;Torralba et al, 2014). Other publications reveal similar results in the rest of the world (Erazo et al, 2015;Jabusch et al, 2015;Zo€ ega et al, 2016). All this goes to show poor control of pain suffered by hospitalized patients, contributing to longer hospital stays, increased readmissions and decreased satisfaction among patients and their families (Jabusch et al, 2015).…”

“…In internal medicine patients are usually elderly, with comorbidities and some of them are long-term suffers which could result in high levels of prevalence of pain (Muñoz-Alvaredo et al, 2018). Because of that, these patients usually have longer average hospital stays and need more Care Plans (Muntinga et al, 2016;Zo€ ega et al, 2016). For these reasons, nurses from the medical areas may have been more motivated to participate in this study.…”

“…To achieve this point, a proactive attitude on the part of nurses is required. Because nurses have a principal role in pain management, it is highly likely that attitudes could be improved by enhancing communication about therapies and by counselling (Zo€ ega et al, 2016). Effective communication is not possible without a relationship of empathy and confidence, permitting a holistic assessment without value judgments on the part of nurses (Schreiber et al, 2014).…”

“…Hence, pain management depends to a large extent on how nurses go about dealing with an occurrence, how nurses address individual occurrences, and how they evaluate and record it, the latter being an indicator of good clinical practice and quality of care (Sepúlveda-S anchez et al, 2016). Teamwork and coordination between physicians and nurses is essential for optimal pain management, but it must be kept in mind that nurses' perceptions affect the approach taken to deal with an episode of pain (Zo€ ega et al, 2016). The reasons that pain is poorly dealt with in a hospital are complex and arise from multiple sources.…”