Abstract
To explore nurses' perspectives and generate recommendations for nursing practice of pain assessment and management in dementia care in a hospital setting. Semi-structured face-to-face interviews were conducted with nurses who had experience in dementia care from two care units of a regional hospital. Data were analysed using six phases of reflexive thematic analysis. Eight nurses from two inpatient units of a local district hospital were interviewed. Five themes were identified: (1) ways of understanding, (2) practicality of pain assessment tools, (3) usefulness of pain scores, (4) analgesia use and (5) limitations to practice. Nurses perceived pain tools did not sufficiently help to assess pain in people with dementia, and adaptation was often needed when scoring pain. Overuse of analgesia, trial-and-error practice and delayed prescriptions for analgesia limited pain management effectiveness for people with dementia during hospitalisation. Pain tools are preferably used as a complementary method in addition to nurses' intuitional judgement. Reporting pain via scores requires a more complete narrative description from the source of pain reports to allow clinicians to accurately report a persons' pain. Clinicians must minimise trial-and-error practice in analgesia by conducting comprehensive pain assessments. Health-care organisations need to foster timely collaboration between clinicians to support nurses' practice limitations for effective analgesia administration in dementia care.
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Disclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.