Nurses’ Compliance at Reporting Patient's Pain: Shift Handover Observations from a Tertiary Care Hospital in Karachi, Pakistan

Abstract

Pain is a common and serious problem that affects patients’ physical, psychological and social wellbeing. Evidence suggests that pain is under-identified and under-reported by nursing personnel. Assessing nurses’ compliance at reporting patients’ pain at shift handover was the component of the study aimed at assessing the compliance of nursing shift handover practices. This descriptive crosssectional study recruited a total of 43 nurses from a medical and surgical unit of a tertiary care hospital. Each nurse's shift handover practices were observed and evaluated against the ISBAPARRST tool. This tool was adapted by incorporating the study setting's shift report policy and tool, and evidence based literature. The tool's content validity and inter-rater reliability was also verified (K=0.938). A total of 129 nursing shift handover observations were made, out of which 9.3% of the observations showed that nurses were compliant at reporting patients’ pain; however, 90.7% of the observations showed nurses’ noncompliance. The study findings suggest that report on patient's pain is often missed at nursing shift handover; and whenever integrated, the pain scale score is never specified. On the basis of study findings, recommendations are made in relation to nursing administration, education and research.