• Roberta Rapetti, Elena Colmia Franchino, Simona Visca, Eva Riccomagno, Francesco Porro, Debora Vittonetto, and Alberto Piacenza.
• Local Healthcare Unit, Savona, Italy.
• Pain Manag Nurs. 2024 Apr 1; 25 (2): 131136131-136.

BackgroundPain constitutes a serious problem of a health, economic, ethical, and social equity nature affecting negatively quality of life. Its assessment is often subjected to overestimation or underestimation.AimThe aim of this study is threefold: (1) to estimate the prevalence of pain in hospitalized patients; (2) to assess the grade of correlation between the level of pain observed by the nurses and the pain perceived by the patients; and (3) to examine the level of scientific knowledge among the healthcare professionals.DesignCross-sectional study.MethodsThe intensity level of observed and perceived pain has been evaluated in 401 patients with validated scales. Analyzed data have been extracted from the electronic medical record and integrated into the data-collection sheet. A questionnaire has been submitted to nurses to investigate their level of knowledge on pain assessment and management.ResultsThe study included 350 patients out of 401; for 51 patients the "pain" data was missing. Prevalence of perceived pain was 40.15%. Nurses overestimated pain in 7.43% of cases and underestimated it in 24.9%. The majority of the nursing staff claimed to be aware of the pain topic, however, they showed some uncertainties in clinical practice.ConclusionsThe differential variation between the observed pain and the perceived one resulted in 43.71% of cases, highlighting the dependence on the two variables: "area of hospitalization" and "intensity level". The observation and monitoring of pain did not appear to be a consolidated practice, thus representing an important area for investments in the nursing profession.Copyright © 2023 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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