Time from Pain Assessment to Pain Intervention

Area of Science:

• Nursing
• Pain Management
• Human Factors Engineering

Background:

• Optimizing nursing time is crucial for effective pain management within healthcare budgets.
• Limited understanding exists regarding the specific processes and activities nurses undertake to manage patient pain.

Purpose of the Study:

• To identify and describe factors influencing the time interval between pain assessment and intervention for patients experiencing acute postsurgical pain.
• To quantify the impact of various elements on the efficiency of nursing pain management.

Main Methods:

• Utilized human factors engineering principles and ethnographic methods to analyze nursing workflows.
• Quantified factors affecting the duration from pain assessment to the initiation of pain interventions.

Main Results:

• Nurses dedicated approximately 11% of their shifts (mean, 83 minutes) to pain care activities over 175.5 observation hours.
• Intervention times for PRN analgesics or biobehavioral strategies ranged from 0 to 48 minutes (mean, <11 minutes) for 58 cases.
• Identified five key factors that significantly influenced the timeliness of pain interventions.

Conclusions:

• Administering PRN analgesics on a scheduled basis emerged as the most efficient method for managing postsurgical pain.
• Nurse leaders can enhance prompt pain management by empowering staff through delegation, implementing process improvements, utilizing real-time monitoring, and fostering prescriber engagement.