Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses
-
One of the critical components in pain management is the assessment of pain. Multidimensional measurement tools capture multiple aspects of a patient's pain experience but can be cumbersome to administer in busy clinical settings. ⋯ Our review identified eight multidimensional pain measurement tools that nurses can use in ambulatory or acute care settings to capture patients' experience of pain. The most important element in selecting a multidimensional pain measure, though, is that one tool is selected that best fits the practice and is used consistently over time.
-
Effective acute pain management strategies are important for young adults in order to reduce risk for transition to chronic pain. ⋯ African American young adults report moderate levels of pain intensity and pain interference with function. A significant number report no pain self-management strategies. Focused pain assessment and education about efficacious pain self-management strategies, both pharmacological and complementary, could assist young African Americans to reduce their pain and risk of chronic pain in the future.
-
Surgical patients consider information about pain and pain management to be highly important (Apfelbaum, 2003). At the same time, evidence indicates that members of racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to experience inadequate pain management (Green, Anderson, Baker, Campbell, Decker, Fillingim, & Todd, 2003; Mossey, 2011). ⋯ Similar to English-fluent participants (Kastanias et al., 2009), participants who primarily spoke either Cantonese, Italian, or Portuguese at home placed moderate to high importance on all of the information items. and neither surgical subtype, health status nor age had any effect on the importance of any item. The multilingual sample in this study placed more importance than English-fluent participants on information regarding help with paying for pain medication (p = .001) and the side effects they were most likely to experience (p < .05). Due to a paucity of literature in this area, further research is warranted. Results may assist with evaluating and improving current approaches to surgical patient pain management education.
-
The opioid epidemic in the United States is changing the population nurses serve. Stigma and bias among healthcare providers towards patients with substance use disorder occurs across disciplines and negatively impacts the care provided to this population. We sought to assess the knowledge and perceptions of first-year nursing students at a large college of nursing towards those with opioid use disorder and to provide an educational intervention with the goals of decreasing bias, increasing substance use disorder knowledge, and increasing the understanding of multi-pronged treatment strategies. ⋯ Since bias and stigma negatively impact care provided by clinicians, presentations such as this one can not only provide education on evidence based practices, but may change the attitudes of future providers, improving the quality of healthcare delivered to this vulnerable population.
-
Among cancer patients in the United States, African American cancer patients have the highest mortality rate and shortest survival rate. Although depression is known as a predictor of mortality in cancer and a potential barrier to health care utilization, research on depression in African American patients is limited. Cancer pain can interfere with an individual's ability to cope with depression. ⋯ The findings of this study help to identify African American cancer patients at risk for depression and demonstrates the need for increased screening for depression in this underserved population.