Healthcare Providers’ Knowledge and Current Practice of Pain Assessment and Management: How Much Progress Have We Made?

Abstract

Context. Despite improvement in pain management and availability of clinical treatment guidelines, patients in Jordan are still suffering from pain. Negative consequences of undertreated pain are being recognized as a reason for further illnesses and poor quality of life. Healthcare providers (HCPs) are responsible for relieving pain of their patients. Objective. To evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of HCPs toward pain management in Jordan. Methods. A 16-item questionnaire with agree or disagree options was given to 662 HCPs in seven hospitals in Jordan who volunteered to participate in the study. Following data collection, the responses were coded and entered into SPSS. Results. There was a statistically significant difference (p < 0.004) in percentage scores between physicians (36%) and pharmacists (36%) versus nurses (24%). The level of knowledge was the best among physicians, followed by pharmacists specifically in the area of cancer pain management. Nurses scored the lowest for knowledge of pain assessment and management among HCPs. However, HCPs overall scores indicated insufficient knowledge specifically in relation to pain assessment and management among children.

Knowledge and Attitude towards Pain Management among Nurses Working at University of Gondar Comprehensive Specialized Hospital, Northwest Ethiopia

“…A study done in the United Kingdom had a comparative cross-sectional study design but our study design was descriptive cross-sectional. e USA study used a mail data collection technique by using 52 items for the assessment of knowledge among 1000 emergency e result of this study also showed that nurses' knowledge towards pain management was higher than that in the studies done in Mekelle, Ethiopia, 58.6% [22], Zimbabwe, 35.5% [16], Iran, 46.6% [23], Turkey, 38.2% [12] and 39.5% [24], Australia, 24% [25] and Malaysia, 25% [4]. e possible justification of this finding which is higher than the above studies might be due to differences in study setting, the difference in sample size, different instruments used, and the difference in the outcome rating they used; for example, in Malaysian study, the knowledge was rated as high, moderate, and low.…”

Nursing-Related Barriers to Children’s Pain Management at Selected Hospitals in Ghana: A Descriptive Qualitative Study

“…It is therefore important for nurses to select and use appropriate assessment tool for pain management to enhance optimal pain relief [30]. Previous studies [21,31] report of lack of pain assessment tools which were linked to suboptimal pain management of patients. Although any such linkages were beyond the scope of the present study, we believe the absence of pain assessment tools may negatively impact pediatric pain management as pain assessment tools serve as a guide in providing baseline information and serving as a means of evaluating the effectiveness of pain management interventions [32].…”

Physicians’ knowledge, perceived barriers, and practices regarding cancer pain management: a cross-sectional study from Palestine

“…This has been conventionally attributed to a variety of obstacles including health professional, patient, and health-care system concerns [2][3][4]. Health-care providers in general, and physicians in particular, have been frequently evaluated in terms of their knowledge, attitude and practice in regards to cancer pain management (CPM) [5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”