Influence of Surgical Nurses’ Information Behaviour on Surgical Patients’ Pain Relief in Teaching Hospitals in Port Harcourt, Nigeria

Abstract

Surgical patients need prompt and adequate pain relief after surgery. This required surgical nurses’ need to acquire and use information to facilitate pain relief. The ability of surgical nurses’ to seek and use pain management information would enhance patients’ pain relief. Based on this assumption, the study investigated influence of nurses’ information behaviour on surgical patients’ pain relief in teaching hospitals in Port Harcourt.

The study adopted survey design. A total sample of 786 drawn from the population of 3854 included 152 surgical nurses, 317 surgical patients, and 317 medication charts of the surgical patients using Krejcie and Morgan table. Multistage sampling technique was applied to select the participants. A validated questionnaire which was partly adapted, and medication charts audit checklist were used for data collection. Cronbach’s alpha coefficients for the constructs ranged from 0.74 to 0.90. Data were analyzed using descriptive and inferential statistics.Findings revealed that nurses’ information behaviour components (Adj. R2 = 0.146, (F(2.143) =13.362, p<0.05) had significant positive relative influence on surgical patients’ pain relief. Nurses information behaviour (R² = 0.144, β = 0.380, p <0.05, significantly influence surgical patients’ pain relief F(1,144) = 24.253, p< 0.05). Findings revealed that surgical nurses’ information behaviour was very good, average weighted mean (M = 3.46). Further findings showed that surgical patients’ level of pain relief was very high (M = 1.75). The study concludes that nurses’ information behaviour improved surgical patients’ pain relief in teaching hospitals in Port Harcourt, Nigeria. The study recommends that surgical nurses should improve on their information seeking and use behaviour to maintain pain relief among surgical patients.

Keywords: Nurses’ information seeking, Nurses’ information use, Pain relief, Surgical patients’ pain relief, Teaching Hospitals

DOI: 10.7176/IKM/11-3-03

Publication date: April 30^th 2021