Patients’ attitudes, experience and satisfaction with acute postoperative pain management: A multicentre survey of 15 tertiary hospitals in Maharashtra.

Abstract

Background and aims: Optimal postoperative pain management leads to improved patient related outcomes (PROs),and satisfactionin the patients. It is important to understand the patients’ perspective as it helps in developing strategies for improvement. Attitudes and beliefs of patients are important because wrong attitudes and misconceptions can act as barriers in providing pain relief.Hence, a multicentre survey was carried out in the tertiary hospitals of Maharashtrato understand the attitudes,beliefs,experiences and satisfaction levels of patients with acute postoperative pain management. Also,comparison of responses was done to evaluate if Acutepain service (APS) leads to better patient outcomes and satisfaction.Materials and methods: A 13-item questionnaire for patients, adapted from previous studies was used to collect data on patients’ experience of postoperative pain management.The responses of 179 patients were included in the study.Results:The incidence of postoperative pain was 91.6% with 75.5% having moderate to severe pain.Despite this, 91.06% of patients were satisfied. Patients in APS set up had lower incidence of moderate –severe pain (44.23%) and higher satisfaction rates (100%).Although, 35.2% of patients pronounced that postoperative pain management should be done in best possible way, they also had many misconceptions, which were possibly reinforced by counselling done by health providers.Conclusions:The findings suggest that the postoperative pain management is far from adequate even with an APS in place. Patient and health provider education needs to be stressed for better pain management and improved outcomes.