Nurses’ experiences with health care in pain clinics: A qualitative study

Abstract

Background Recent research has focused on the effectiveness of different treatment regimens in pain clinics, where a call for more multifaceted treatment has been highlighted. Less attention has been paid to improvements within pain clinics, and how registered nurses—who usually play a key role—perceive and experience the accessibility, treatment options and follow-up offers at public pain clinics. Objective The overall aim was to explore and describe how nurses experience health care provided to patients with chronic non-cancer pain at pain clinics. Methods We used 10 individual interviews with nurses working at 10 different public pain clinics in Norway. The interviews were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. Results One theme was developed from the content analysis: “Nurses’ striving to provide whole-person care in pain clinics.” The nurses experienced allocation of limited resources as challenging, especially when the dilemma between accepting new patients from the waiting list and offering follow-up to existing patients became apparent. Multifaceted treatment was perceived as vital, although resources, priorities, and theoretical understanding of pain within the team were challenging. Conclusions The needs for multifaceted and integrated treatments in chronic pain management were obvious, although this approach appeared to be too demanding of resources and time. Stronger cooperation between pain clinics in specialist care and health care providers in primary care to ensure better patient flow and treatment is required. Emphasis is placed on coherent theoretical approaches to pain management within the team in the pain clinics to ensure whole person care.

Perceptions of Retired Nurses on Factors Preventing Younger Professional Nurses from Applying the Ethos of Ubuntu in Professional Care

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Patients’ Experience of Attending a Binge Eating Group Program – Qualitative Evaluation of a Pilot Study

“…ran the therapeutic groups as well as the evaluation focus group. The second and third authors (E.D., B.F.) have long academic experience of developing nursing interventions related to CBT and therapeutic writing ( Dysvik & Furnes, 2018 ; Gjesdal et al., 2019 ). The last author (V.U.)…”

Evaluation of a non‐pharmacological interdisciplinary pain rehabilitation and functional restoration program for chronic pain in veterans

“…Higher mortality may be due in part to increased use of illicit opioids related to undiagnosed opioid use disorder (OUD) or selfmedication for bio-psycho-social-existential pains. [9][10][11] These trends highlight the critical importance of VA programs providing treatment options within the stepped care approach for Veterans with chronic pain and a history of opioid use. In this study we sought to evaluate the effectiveness of one such program, an intensive outpatient pain care functional restoration program for non-pharmacological management of chronic pain offered by VA in a large metro-area system.…”

“…Despite VA efforts to improve opioid safety, overdose deaths among Veterans remain high, reaching 32.6 deaths per 100,00 in 2017 and then falling slightly to 30.3/100,000 in 2019. Higher mortality may be due in part to increased use of illicit opioids related to undiagnosed opioid use disorder (OUD) or self‐medication for bio‐psycho‐social‐existential pains 9–11 . These trends highlight the critical importance of VA programs providing treatment options within the stepped care approach for Veterans with chronic pain and a history of opioid use.…”