• Pain Manag Nurs · Oct 2015

    To Receive or Not to Receive Analgesics in the Emergency Department: The Importance of the Pain Intensity Assessment and Initial Nursing Assessment.

    • Åsa Muntlin Athlin, Marianne Carlsson, and Lena Gunningberg.
    • Department of Medical Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; Uppsala University Hospital, Department of Emergency Care, Uppsala, Sweden; Department of Public Health and Caring Sciences, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden; School of Nursing, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia. Electronic address: asa.muntlin@pubcare.uu.se.
    • Pain Manag Nurs. 2015 Oct 1; 16 (5): 743-50.

    AbstractPatients seeking emergency care for abdominal pain still experience poor pain management. Pain intensity is not always seen as a mandatory parameter in the initial nurse assessment. Despite the development of nurse-initiated analgesic protocols, many patients do not receive analgesics in the emergency department. The aim of this study was to describe initial nursing assessment related to pain management and to identify predictors for receiving or not receiving analgesics in the emergency department. The sample consists of 100 patients from an intervention group in a previously undertaken Swedish intervention study. The main findings were that the registered nurses assessed 62 patients as being in need of analgesics, and that 52 of these obtained analgesics. The majority of the patients assessed as not being in need of analgesics did not receive analgesics because they did not want medication. Median value for pain intensity at initial assessment was 6 on the numerical rating scale. The results for the logistic regression (n = 80) showed significant differences between receiving analgesics/not receiving analgesics and the predictor pain intensity (measured at initial nurse assessment). Nurses in emergency departments play a crucial role, in that their initial assessment is of specific importance for the patient's further care and whether the patient may or may not receive analgesics. However, more attention has to be paid to patients' experiences and their expectations regarding the pain management in the emergency department. These complex questions have to be studied further in a more systematic way.Copyright © 2015 American Society for Pain Management Nursing. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

      Pubmed     Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…