Daily pain assessment: value for nurses and patients

Current guidelines for pain management recommend systematic assessment of p ain. A few standardized tools exist for the daily assessment of pain intens ity, for example the numeric rating scale or visual analogue scale, yet the se instruments are rarely used by nurses. In the study reported in this pap er, a numeric rating scale accompanied by an educational programme for nurs es, was implemented in three hospitals. The paper describes the feasibility of daily pain assessment from the nurses' and patients' perspective in mul tiple settings. The outcomes studied were the professional compliance of nu rses with daily pain assessment, and the value of daily pain assessment for both nurses and patients. The results show that nurses' compliance with da ily pain assessment is high (73.9%) and that daily pain assessment is feasi ble and valued by nurses; however, differences between the three hospitals and two specialties (medical vs. surgical wards) were found. Although patie nts have difficulty with expressing their pain by use of a number, almost a ll patients are able to give a pain score and a majority is positive about daily pain assessment. From this study it can be concluded that daily pain assessment is practical and appreciated by nurses as well as patients, but attuning the implementation protocol to the needs of the specific setting i s necessary.