TITLE:
Assessing an Educational Program to Improve Documentation and Reduce Pain in Hospitalized Patients
AUTHORS:
Nina Karlsen, Ragnhild Haaland Kornmo, Alfhild Dihle
KEYWORDS:
Educational Program, Documentation, Numeric Rating Scale, Pain Assessment, Postoperative Pain
JOURNAL NAME:
Open Journal of Nursing,
Vol.5 No.4,
April
22,
2015
ABSTRACT: Few experimental studies have evaluated the efficacy of continuing educational programs aimed at the improvement of nurses’ pain-management skills. This study assessed whether a standardized educational program aimed at nurses could increase the use of the Numeric Rating Scale-11 in both documenting and reducing postoperative pain-intensity levels in hospitalized surgical patients. The study had a quasi-experimental pre- and post-intervention design. Data were collected from records of surgical patients prior to and after the standardized educational program was completed. There were no significant differences between pre- and post-intervention groups in terms of either pain-documentation frequency or pain-intensity level. The study showed no increase in the frequency of postoperative pain documentation and no reduction of surgical patients’ postoperative pain-intensity level. This finding indicates that the standardized educational program on postoperative pain management was insufficient to bring about changes in clinical practice.