Student nurses' experiences of caring for patients in pain

Poor pain assessment contributes to inadequate pain relief. Studies in the United States have shown that while student nurses become more sensitive to psychological distress during training, they become less sensitive to pain . However, a recent study by the authors in the United Kingdom found that w hile inferences of psychological distress increased there was no change in inferences of pain over the common foundation programme. This study set out to explore their experiences of caring for patients in pain during the fir st 18 months of their training in order to understand how these experiences might affect their sensitivity to patient's pain. Interviews with 15 stude nts following their common foundation programme showed that they experience d a wide range of strong emotions when caring for patients in pain. Their r elatively junior status in the wards seemed to place them in difficult posi tions and provided them with little support. Theories of desensitisation, c ognitive dissonance and acculturation have been proposed to explain decreas ing sensitivity to pain. The lack of a significant change in students' infe rences of pain and the analysis of their interviews suggest that their expe riences are more varied than these theories suggest. The students experienc es echo those found in previous studies relating to the socialisation of st udent nurses and emotional labour (Melia, 1987. Learning and Working. The O ccupational Socialization Nurses. Tavistock Publishers, London; Smith, 1992 . The Emotional Labour of Nursing. Macmillan, London). These findings have important implications for both nurse education and the mechanisms to suppo rt student nurses in clinical practice. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.