Emergency Nurses’ Barriers for Assessing and Managing Pain

Abstract

Background: Patients who seek the emergency department frequently require prompt care that may involve giving them treatment to manage symptoms that include pain. Patients are frequently required to wait for long amounts of time without having their pain evaluated or given analgesics, making pain management a frequently neglected part of acute care. Aim: To determine emergency nurses' barriers to assessing and managing pain. Design: A descriptive research design was included. Settings: This study was performed in the emergency units of Damanhour Medical National institute hospital. Sample: A purposive sample of 110 emergency nurses who worked in the emergency unit of selected units. Tools of data collection: One tool for emergency nurses' barriers to assessing and managing pain was developed. This tool comprised of two parts. Part one sociodemographic data and part two was adopted. Results: The mean age of the examined nurses were 42±19. About 59.09% of them were female. The reported nurses related barriers to assess and manage pain were inadequate staff knowledge, inadequate assessment of pain management of barriers to management pain, and lack of education with pain assessment tools. Physician associated barriers were ineffective consideration of pain and pain relief. System concerned barriers were the patient-to-nurse ratio and lack of alternative nonpharmacologic therapy for pain Management. Patient related barriers were difficult to assess patients using a pain scale, inability to communicate with patients and hemodynamic instability. Recommendation: Nursing educators need to revise the nursing curriculum in the scope of emergency nurses. Health policymakers need to establish regulations for pain assessment in emergencies. Using administrative strategy and plan to overcome on high nursing workload and patient-nurse ratio.