Nurses’ Approach to Pain Assessment and Management in relation to patient Satisfaction at Asella Hospital, Arsi Zone, Eastern Ethiopia

Abstract

Background: Pain is a personal and subjective experience with few or no objective measurements. Pain has been defined in many different ways by health professionals. Some of the definitions enhance the nurses’ ability to assess the patient who is in pain by helping the nurse to focus on specific aspects of pain experience. The nurse may define pain control difficult problem faced in providing total care for individual patients. It is however, one of the most important areas of care because people can’t function fully when they are in pain. Thus, the aim of this study was to assess nurses’ approach to pain assessment in relation to patient satisfaction at Asella hospital.

Methods: A cross -sectional study was conducted in Asella hospital. Convenience sampling technique was applied to select the study subjects. Data was collected by using pretested structured questionnaires from staff nurses of surgical ward and patients admitted in surgical ward.

Result: Regarding pain assessment tool practice nearly half of them 28(46.67%) had good practice and 20(33.33%) fairly practiced and the rest poorly practiced 12(20%). 46(38.33%) of patients have moderate pain, 40(33.34%) of patient s have no pain and mild pain by each 16.67% and the rest 34 have severe pain. Concerning satisfaction of patients on nursing care majority 48 (40%) of patients were unsatisfied while only 34(28%) were completely satisfied.

Conclusion: There was no well-established and need based communication between the nurses and patients. It was suggested that the failure in the special areas; such as pre-information, pain assessment approach to patients and exchange of reports were mainly related to inadequate training in pain assessment and management.

Keywords: Assessment, Management, Pain, Satisfaction.