• Jennifer Cogan, Marie-France Ouimette, Grisell Vargas-Schaffer, Zeynep Yegin, Alain Deschamps, and André Denault.
• Department of Anesthesia , Montreal Heart Institute/Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Electronic address: jennifer.cogan@umontreal.ca.
• Pain Manag Nurs. 2014 Sep 1; 15 (3): 574-9.

AbstractSeveral studies have outlined the impact of patient's beliefs on their level of pain relief after surgery and have underlined that misconceptions are barriers to effective pain relief. The aim of this survey was to evaluate the beliefs of the patients to help create a specifically adapted pain education program. After ethics approval, all patients scheduled to undergo cardiac surgery of any kind were approached and asked to complete a voluntary, non-nominative questionnaire that included the Barriers Questionnaire and the Screening Tool for Addiction Risk (STAR) Questionnaire. All completed questionnaires were collected from the charts every evening or the morning before surgery. Of 564 patients scheduled for surgery, 379 patients (67.5%) returned questionnaires. The average age was 60.3 years, and 66.0% were male. Results of the Barriers Questionnaire showed that 31% of patients were in strong agreement that "it is easy to become addicted to pain medication," 20% agreed that "good patients do not speak of their pain," and 36% believe that "pain medication should be saved in case pain worsens." Little or no gains have been made in decreasing misconceptions related to the treatment of pain. This study underlines the considerable need for and absolute necessity to provide pain education to patients undergoing cardiac surgery. Copyright © 2014 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

27 keywords...

hide…