WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS FOR NURSES IN MANAGING POST-OPERATIVE PAIN Free Essay Example, 2250 words

Introduction Patients often have poor understanding of pain and as a result, often develop low expectations for pain relief and their level of satisfaction with the pain management efforts by the healthcare professionals. An effective management of pain can help patients to relieve their pain and achieve early mobilization thus helping patients to recover and return to normality as soon as possible. Effective pain management not only reduces the stay of patients at the hospital but also reduces the cost involved. Pain management is considered as the second most common nursing intervention. It is however still a consistent problem faced and has not been adequately addressed yet. The recurrence and higher probability of pain after surgery indicates the overall significance of the problem faced by the medical professionals. Since last many decades, various studies have critically highlighted the inadequate nature of the post-operative pain management by the physicians as well as by the nurses. These studies not only highlight the inadequate knowledge of the medical professionals but also provide a critical insight into the attitude of nurses and medical professionals towards post-operative pain management. Since it is also the second most common cause of nursing intervention therefore it directly affects the way nurses perform their job. We will write a custom essay sample on WHAT ARE THE BARRIERS FOR NURSES IN MANAGING POST-OPERATIVE PAIN or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now What is critical to note however is the fact that medical professionals including nurses lack the knowledge, education and face other barriers to manage the post-operative pain. This literature review will present a critical review of 10 articles on this topic using Critical Appraisal Skill Programme tool to critically evaluate the articles under study. Methodological Overview of Articles Rajeh et. al (2008) used a qualitative approach to understand and explore the perceptions and experience of nurses regarding post-operative pain management. By using semi-structured interviews from 26 nurses in Iranian educational hospitals, this study utilized constant comparative method to analyze the data. It has been suggested that there are widespread knowledge gaps which need to be addressed in order to effectively tackle post-operative pain management issues. Same approach has been undertaken by Blondal & Halldorsdottir (2009) also where through 20 dialogues with 10 experienced nurses were conducted to understand as to how nurses care patients suffering post-operative pain. This was a phenomenological study with focus on understanding the motivations of nurses in pain management and what actually restricts them to achieve the objective of relieving patient sufferings.