Research about the effect of pain-related education program on nurses' attitude, knowledge and as-sessment practices of pains

Abstract

Objective To know the influence of pain-related education program on nurses'attitude, knowledge and assessment practices of pains.Methods The effects of pain education program (PEP) were measured by a quasi-experimental design, 196 nurses were divided into the experimental group(106 cases)and the control group(90 cases)randomly.Pain education program was used only in the experimental group.Compared level of pain- related knowledge, attitude and assessement paractiees between the two groups.Results Nurses in the experimental group who received the PEP had a significant improvement in their pain knowledge and attitudes.Their scores on the NKAS increased from 15.67 at T1 to 26.13 at T2 and 35.14 at T3.The scores of nurses in the control group were unchanged (from 15.20 at T1 to 14.29 at T2 and 14.93 at T3).In addition, the percentage of experimental group nurses who correctly used the Changhai Pain Scale to assess patients' pain intensity increased significantly after the PEP, and the in-creased usage of the assessment tool between experimental and control groups also shows a statistical differ-ence in trend.Conclusions The PEP does impact on nurses' knowledge levels and clinical behavior.It can be concluded that PEP is effective in improving nurses' pain knowledge, attitude and assessment prac-tice. Key words: Nurse; Pain knowledge; Attitude; Pain assessment; Education program