Pain management nursing : official journal of the American Society of Pain Management Nurses
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Providing optimal pain care for patients is essential to the work of nursing and a measure of patient satisfaction prompting some hospitals to offer pain management classes for clinicians. Although nurses generally do well on knowledge tests after attending a pain class, actual improvement in pain care for patients may not occur. The personal values of the clinician may be a key driver of pain-management decision making. ⋯ Four themes were identified among participants' answers: understanding the patient, importance of pain education, nurse's self-awareness, and interpretation of personal values. Nurses who learned how their personal values affect their pain management decisions described new insights into their own approach to pain management. More research is needed to fully understand the impact of knowing one's own values and determining which clinician values are associated with optimal pain care.
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Review
Central Sensitization in Functional Chronic Pain Syndromes: Overview and Clinical Application.
The purpose of this review and clinical application article is to offer nurses up-to-date knowledge on peripheral and central sensitization in chronic functional pain syndromes, and to discuss therapies that have shown efficacy in treating various aspects of these disorders. Central sensitization is a result of changes in the peripheral and central nervous system due to noxious stimuli, such as illness or trauma. ⋯ More research needs to be conducted on the basis and patient perception of functional pain syndromes to reduce the morbidity and significant disability associated with these illnesses. Nurses have the opportunity to be at the forefront of this research because of their holistic and multidimensional approach to patient care, assessment, and symptom management.
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Older African Americans consistently report diminished capacities to perform activities of daily living (ADL) compared with other racial groups. The extent to which bodily pain is related to declining abilities to perform ADL/ADL disability in African Americans remains unclear, as does whether this relationship exists to the same degree in African American men and women. For nurses to provide optimal care for older African Americans, a better understanding of the relationship between bodily pain and ADL disability and how it may differ by sex is needed. ⋯ African American women (odds ratio [OR] = 4.06; 95% confidence interval [CI] 2.63-6.26) and African American men (OR = 6.44; 95% CI = 2.84-14.57) who reported bodily pain had greater ADL disability than those who did not report bodily pain. Having two or more comorbid conditions also was significantly associated with ADL disability in African American women (OR = 3.95; 95% CI: 2.09-7.47). Further work is needed to understand pain differences between older African American women and men to develop interventions that can be tailored to meet the individual pain needs of both groups.