PAIN KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES OF HEALTH-CARE PROVIDERS - PRACTICE CHARACTERISTIC DIFFERENCES

Objective: To evaluate the knowledge and attitudes of different health care professionals regarding pain issues such as addiction, the assess ment of pain, scheduling, use of analgesics, and pediatric pain. Addit ionally, to determine whether differences exist based on hospital sett ing, years of service, clinical practice area, and country of origin. Design: A total of 686 nurses, physicians, pharmacists, and medical/nu rsing students from three hospitals completed a 17-item survey evaluat ing knowledge and beliefs about pain. Setting: The three hospital sett ings were a large city hospital, a private community hospital, and a s tate medical school-based hospital. Results: The overall percentage '' correct'' score was only 56%. Physicians scored significantly higher, and pharmacists scored significantly lower than other groups. Nurses s cored significantly less concordantly than physicians on 11 of the 17 items. Those identifying anesthesiology as their clinical practice are a scored significantly higher than all other areas, whereas those prac ticing within medicine demonstrated significantly more ''correct'' sco res than those in surgery. City hospital respondents scored significan tly lower than professionals practicing in the other two hospitals; no n-U.S. country of origin professionals scored significantly lower than U.S. country of origin healthcare professionals. There were no signif icant differences based on postgraduate years of practice. Conclusions : Significant knowledge deficits regarding currently accepted principl es of pain management practice as well as beliefs that could interfere with optimal care, mandate a need for educational interventions. Sign ificant differences by profession, clinical practice area, and hospita l setting reflect populations to be targeted for interventions. Unwarr anted fear of addiction is a misunderstood and important concept that needs to be addressed.