Effects of the pain nursing group in refractory postherpetic neuralgia patients

Abstract

Objective To explore the effects of the pain nursing group in nursing care for refractory postherpetic neuralgia patients. Methods In January 2017, we established the pain nursing group comprised of 10 members including the director of department, head nurse and nurses to carry out professional pain nursing. The intervention effects were compared before (January 2015 to December 2016, the control group) and after (January to December 2017, the observation group) establishment of group with the Numerical Rating Scale (NRS) , Wisconsin Brief Pain Inventory (WBPI) , Houston Pain Outcome Instrument (HPOI) , Self-rating Anxiety Scale (SAS) and Self-rating Depression Scale (SDS) among 45 postherpetic neuralgia patients. Results Ten days after intervention, the scores of NRS, WBPI, SAS and SDS of observation group were (1.10±0.89) , (1.21±0.80) , (41.65±6.24) and (43.30±6.18) respectively, lower than those of control group with statistical difference (P<0.05) . After intervention, there was a statistical difference in the score of HPOI of patients between observation group (8.01±1.42) and control group (7.00±1.46) (P<0.05) . Conclusions The application of pain nursing group in intervention for refractory postherpetic neuralgia can obviously alleviate pain, relieve anxiety and depression, and improve satisfaction with pain control of patients. Key words: Neuralgia, postherpetic; Anxiety; Depression; Pain nursing group