The Use of Comfort Kits to Optimize Adult Cancer Pain Management

Pain is one of the most feared of all symptoms for the cancer patient. Some studies estimate that up to 90% of all cancer patients experience pain. Advances in pharmaceuticals and expert provider knowledge have improved pain management overall for the patient with cancer; however, complementary therapies can synergize medications to provide optimal pain relief while decreasing the side effect profile. Despite this, nurses may have limited access to such resources. Many therapies can be administered directly by the bedside/chairside nurse with minimal training and the nurse can then teach the patient and family how to use the selected complementary therapy after leaving the hospital or clinic.

The oncology nurse will be able to identify several easy-to-implement complementary therapies that can supplement pharmacologic pain management for cancer patients.

As a quality project, comfort kits, containing such items as handheld massagers, guided imagery audiotapes, and aromatherapy essential oils, were distributed for use with patients through unit-based pain resource nurses.

More than 500 comfort kit items were tracked by the pain clinical nurse specialist during the comfort kit trial, both by medical record review and by follow-up phone calls to patients. During the comfort kit trial, average pain intensity decreased by 2.25 points on a 0-10 scale in the 24-hour period after use of the item from the comfort kit. Patients also had an overall decrease in the use of pharmacologic pain interventions and an increase in ambulation in the 24-hour period after implementation.

Comfort kits allow nurses easy access to inexpensive tools to supplement pharmaceutical pain management. Optimizing nonpharmacologic pain management can increase patient and nurse satisfaction, improve overall pain management, and decrease untoward side effects.