Nurses’ Experiences with Pain Assessment and Management in Patients with Burns. A Study at the Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital.

Abstract

Pain experienced during burns has been linked to discomforts, preventing patients from fully participating in their care. Inadequate burns pain assessment and management has also been associated with increased morbidity and mortality. The nurse has a professional and legal responsibility to promptly assess and manage pain as well as administration of prescribed analgesics and other pain relief methods to facilitate recovery. This research sought to explore the nurses‘ experiences with pain assessment and management in patients with burns using the Pain Transaction model by Keen et al., (2017) as the main conceptual framework for the study. A qualitative exploratory descriptive design was used and a purposive sampling technique was employed in the recruitment of the participants for the research. The researcher recruited 11 participants from the burns unit of the Korle Bu Teaching hospital. Findings suggested that participants of the study had general knowledge on the management of burns pain. However, they had limited knowledge on tools to assess burns pain which resulted in inadequate pain management. Again, the lack of knowledge by some nurses on pain assessment tools resulted in the prevalence of poor pain management practices such as administration of placebo, ignoring patient‘s pain complain due to the fear of addiction to opioids. Additionally, it was revealed from the study that good interpersonal communication between the nurse and the patient had positive influence on burns pain management. The adverse psychological effect of burns pain management on nurses was also another finding from the study. There is the need to emphasize developing the right attitudes in nurses through adequate training and provision of resources which will lead to improved professionalism and supportive care for patients. A revision of policies on the funding of health care services, especially for patients with burns will also result in appropriate and effective care.