Expectations that patients have of nurses regarding pain management during the post-operative period and interventions of nurses for patients in pain

Abstract

AimThe study was undertaken to determine the expectations that patients staying in surgery clinics have of nurses regarding pain management and interventions of nurses for patients in pain.MethodThe study was descriptively carried out. The study sample was composed of 63 nurses and 315 patients who were operated on and stayed at the surgery clinics of a university hospital. The data were gathered through a face-to-face interview technique using a questionnaire designed and based on the literature. For the examination of the data, numbers, percentages, and means and stan-dard deviations were used.ResultsAccording to the study findings, the main expectation of all of the patients of the nurses regarding pain management was that nurses should care about and pay attention to pain and monitor whether or not the pain decreased (100%). The main interventions by nurses for pain management were pharmacological interventions requested by doc-tors (96.8%) and positioning the patients correctly (96.8%). Other frequently used interventions were hot/cold compresses (74.6%), active-passive exer-cises (71.4%), relaxation exercises (60.3%), and massages (22.2%). The rea-sons non-pharmacological methods were used less frequently by the nurses included insufficient number of nurses, patients’ reluctance to participate in pain relief techniques, lack of time, and lack of information about pain control.ConclusionBased on these results, the following are recommended: considering the expectations of patients who undergo surgery, establishing proper nursing approaches for post-operative pain control, training clinic nurses in pain management, and detecting and correcting poor nursing care practices.

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