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Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department

BACKGROUND: Although pain management is a fundamental aspect of care in emergency departments (EDs), inadequate treatment of pain is unfortunately common. There are multiple local protocols for pain assessment in the ED. This study evaluated whether the initial assessment and treatment of pain in th...

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Autores principales: Dale, Jostein, Bjørnsen, Lars Petter
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2015
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4625614/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514633
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-015-0166-3
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author Dale, Jostein
Bjørnsen, Lars Petter
author_facet Dale, Jostein
Bjørnsen, Lars Petter
author_sort Dale, Jostein
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Although pain management is a fundamental aspect of care in emergency departments (EDs), inadequate treatment of pain is unfortunately common. There are multiple local protocols for pain assessment in the ED. This study evaluated whether the initial assessment and treatment of pain in the ED are in accordance with the in-hospital protocol of the ED at a Norwegian University Hospital. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Prospective data on pain assessment and initial treatment in the ED were collected from nursing and physician documentation. The patients’ perceptions of subjective pain were recorded using a numerical rating scale (NRS) that ranged from 0 to 10. RESULTS: Seventy-seven percent of the 764 enrolled patients were evaluated for pain at arrival. Female patients had a higher probability of not being asked about pain, but there was no difference in the percentage of patients asked about pain with respect to age. Additionally, patients with low oxygen saturation and systolic blood pressure were less likely to be asked about pain. Of those with moderate and severe pain (58 %), only 14 % received pain relief. DISCUSSION: Assessment and treatment of pain in the ED are inadequate and not in line with the local protocols. A focus on strategies to improve pain treatment in the ED is a necessary aspect of developing optimal acute patient care in Norway in the future.
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spelling pubmed-46256142015-10-30 Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department Dale, Jostein Bjørnsen, Lars Petter Scand J Trauma Resusc Emerg Med Original Research BACKGROUND: Although pain management is a fundamental aspect of care in emergency departments (EDs), inadequate treatment of pain is unfortunately common. There are multiple local protocols for pain assessment in the ED. This study evaluated whether the initial assessment and treatment of pain in the ED are in accordance with the in-hospital protocol of the ED at a Norwegian University Hospital. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Prospective data on pain assessment and initial treatment in the ED were collected from nursing and physician documentation. The patients’ perceptions of subjective pain were recorded using a numerical rating scale (NRS) that ranged from 0 to 10. RESULTS: Seventy-seven percent of the 764 enrolled patients were evaluated for pain at arrival. Female patients had a higher probability of not being asked about pain, but there was no difference in the percentage of patients asked about pain with respect to age. Additionally, patients with low oxygen saturation and systolic blood pressure were less likely to be asked about pain. Of those with moderate and severe pain (58 %), only 14 % received pain relief. DISCUSSION: Assessment and treatment of pain in the ED are inadequate and not in line with the local protocols. A focus on strategies to improve pain treatment in the ED is a necessary aspect of developing optimal acute patient care in Norway in the future. BioMed Central 2015-10-29 /pmc/articles/PMC4625614/ /pubmed/26514633 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-015-0166-3 Text en © Dale and Bjørnsen. 2015 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
spellingShingle Original Research
Dale, Jostein
Bjørnsen, Lars Petter
Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department
title Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department
title_full Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department
title_fullStr Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department
title_full_unstemmed Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department
title_short Assessment of pain in a Norwegian Emergency Department
title_sort assessment of pain in a norwegian emergency department
topic Original Research
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4625614/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26514633
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s13049-015-0166-3
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