Background: Many patients suffer from unrelieved pain in hospital settings. Nurses have a pivotal role in pain\nmanagement. Hence, a nurse-based pain management programme may influence how hospitalized patients\nexperience pain. In this study we investigated hospitalized patientsâ?? experience of pain before and after the\nintroduction of a two-component nurse-based pain management programme.\nMethods: A quasi-experimental design with a separate sample pretest-posttest approach was conducted on a\nconvenience sample of 845 patients (Survey 1: N = 282; Survey 2: N = 283; Survey 3: N = 280) admitted to the four\ninpatient units (medical, surgical, maternity, and gynecology) of a university medical center. Data were collected at\nbaseline, before the intervention six weeks after pain management education, and finally immediately after four\nmonths of rounding using an interviewer-administered questionnaire adopted from a Brief Pain Inventory and the\nAmerican Pain Society Patient Outcome Questionnaire.\nResults: All the samples had similar sociocultural backgrounds. The proportion of patients who reported average\nmoderate and severe pain intensity in the last 24 h were 68.8% in Survey 1, 72.8% in Survey 2 and then dropped to\n48.53% in Survey 3 whereas those who reported moderate and severe pain intensity at the time of interview were\n53.9% in Survey 1, 57.1% in Survey 2 and then dropped to 37.1% in Survey 3. The mean pain interference with the\nphysical and emotional function was generally reduced across the surveys after the introduction of the nurse-based\npain management programme. These reductions were statistically significant with p < 0.05.\nConclusions: Though the survey findings must be taken with caution, they demonstrate that the nurse-based pain\nmanagement programme positively influenced patient-reported pain intensity and functional interference at the\nuniversity medical center. This shows the potential clinical importance of the programme for hospitalized patients.
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