Date

10-2018

Department

School of Nursing

Degree

Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP)

Chair

Cynthia Goodrich

Keywords

Pain Management, Pain Assessment, Opioid Crisis

Disciplines

Family Practice Nursing | Geriatric Nursing | Medicine and Health Sciences | Nursing | Other Nursing

Abstract

Most people have encountered pain at some point in their lives. It is a very common complaint nurses hear from patients. When assessing patients, nurses are taught to take what the patient says as his or her pain level as fact. Pain is not a vital sign that can be measured with medical equipment like temperature or blood pressure. Therefore, many nurses find assessing pain challenging. Adding to the complexity of pain management is the current opioid crisis. To help combat some of these issues, the project leader worked with healthcare administrators at a regional teaching hospital in the southeastern United States to create pain assessment and pain management classes for nurses in the new hire nurse residency program. The purpose of the scholarly project was to measure at least 20 registered nurses’ knowledge and attitudes in a new RN graduate residency program regarding pain management. The study was conducted using a quasi-experimental approach to collect and analyze the results of the pre-test and post-test data. A modified version of the “Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain” (KASRP) by the City of Hope was used as the tool to collect data from the participants. There were 32 participants who completed the study. Using descriptive statistics and t-test comparison of the pre-test and post-test data, it can be concluded the educational session was beneficial to the nurses and helped improve their knowledge and attitudes about pain management. The data also supports the need to disseminate the educational sessions to all nurses within the healthcare system.

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