Knowledge and attitudes of nurses toward pain management

BACKGROUND: Pain control is a vitally important goal because untreated pain has detrimental impacts on the patients as hopelessness, impede their response to treatment, and negatively affect their quality of life. Limited knowledge and negative attitudes toward pain management were reported as one of the major obstacles to implement an effective pain management among nurses. The main purpose for this study was to explore Saudi nurses’ knowledge and attitudes toward pain management. METHODS: Cross-sectional survey was used. Three hundred knowledge and attitudes survey regarding pain were submitted to nurses who participated in this study. Data were analyzed with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS; version 17). RESULTS: Two hundred and forty-seven questionnaires were returned response rate 82%. Half of the nurses reported no previous pain education in the last 5 years. The mean of the total correct answers was 18.5 standard deviation (SD 4.7) out of 40 (total score if all items answered correctly) with range of 3–37. A significant difference in the mean was observed in regard to gender (t = 2.55, P = 0.011) females had higher mean score (18.7, SD 5.4) than males (15.8, SD 4.4), but, no significant differences were identified for the exposure to previous pain education (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Saudi nurses showed a lower level of pain knowledge compared with nurses from other regional and worldwide nurses. It is recommended to considered pain management in continuous education and nursing undergraduate curricula.