Non-pharmacological interventions for pain management used by Nurses at the Mezam Polyclinic Bamenda, Cameroon

Abstract

Pain is the most frequent reason for seeking health care and it can significantly interfere with the patient’s physical, emotional and spiritual well-being. Pain management is a very important aspect of nursing care and it has been documented that nurses use non – pharmacological interventions which have unique advantages in relieving pain that medications do not have such as giving the patients a more active role in managing their pain. This cross – sectional study therefore was aimed at evaluating the non – pharmacological interventions for pain management used by nurses at the Mezam polyclinic Bamenda, Cameroon. 30 male and female nurses were randomly selected to take part in this study. Data was collected using a self – administered questionnaire composed of both open and closed ended questions and was analyzed using SPSS version 20.0. The results showed that most of the nurses were females (70.0%) in the age range of 20 – 29 years (53.0%) who had mostly obtained a diploma in nursing (43.3%). Majority of the nurses had been trained on non – pharmacological pain management (87%). Most of the nurses reported using combined non – pharmacological pain management interventions such as counselling, distraction and massage (56.0%) with heat/cold compress (20.0%) being the most common single non – pharmacological therapy used followed by distraction (13.0%). The main health care system barriers to the use of non – pharmacological intervention was nurses’ work load (40.0%) while the main patient related barrier was patient’s strong believe in analgesics (50.0%). In conclusion, majority of the nurses at the Mezam polyclinic have been trained on non – pharmacological pain management (87%) with most of them using combined non – pharmacological pain management interventions such as counselling, distraction and massage (56.0%). The main barriers to the use of non – pharmacological interventions were nurses’ work load (40.0%) and patient’s strong believe in analgesics (50.0%).