Enhancing Nursing Staff Clinical Skills of Pain Assessment: Impact of the Educational Course

Abstract

Objective: To assess the impact of a newly developed educational course in terms of improvement in post-test scores in clinical skills assessment of patients with patient-controlled intravenous analgesia (PCIA) and epidural analgesia using the Likert scale among nursing staff working in a tertiary care teaching hospital. Introduction: Nurses require certain clinical skills to assess patient’s pain adequately. This can be achieved through regular on-the-job training and educational workshops. This will enhance nurses’ clinical practice regarding pain assessment and improve pain treatment and patient satisfaction. Methods: After getting approval from the Institutional Review Committee an education course was developed and implemented. A total of 86 nursing staff attended the course. Teaching methodologies included online lectures, small group tutorials, and hands-on workshops using demonstrations of locally developed videos. Pain assessment skills were assessed at the start of the workshop and the end of the session using PCIA and Epidural Likert scale assessment forms on simulated patients in this experimental, pre-and post- (single-arm) study. Results: Eighty-six participants completed the course, of which 50 (58.1%) were female. In the clinical skill assessment of patients using PCIA, the mean difference in PCIA assessment scores of participants before and after the workshop was 13.88 (90.79%), which was statistically significant (p=<0.001). In the epidural skills assessment, the mean difference in the score of participants before and after the workshop was 15.09 (79.47%), which was statistically significant (p=<0.001). Conclusion: The educational course had a significant impact on increasing the understanding of pain assessment among nursing staff with statistically significant improvement in their clinical skills.