Comparison of Patient-Recorded and Nurse-Recorded Pain Assessments Following Orthopaedic Surgery

While nurses record pain scores relatively infrequently, hospital-based patients may be more available to routinely document their own pain scores to complement the data collected by nurses. This study compared patient self-recorded versus nurse-recorded pain scores in postsurgical orthopaedic patients to better understand the discrepancies between the two sets of scores and inform future treatment strategies. Orthopaedic trauma service patients were enrolled in this study and asked to fill out a pain report, which was compared to nurse-recorded pain scores. Analyses were performed to assess if patient-recorded and nurse-recorded pain scores were significantly different and if patient-recorded pain scores added useful information to nurse-reported pain scores. Data from 20 patients were available for analysis after 506 individuals were screened. On average, patient-recorded pain scores were more frequently reported than nurse-recorded pain scores. Differences between patient self-recorded and nurse-recorded pain scores were statistically nonrandom and exhibited notable patterns in most of the patients analyzed. These differences were clinically significant 44.3% of the time during which the nurse-recorded and patient self-recorded pain scores overlapped. More frequent self-reporting of postsurgical pain scores in orthopaedic patients reveals statistically nonrandom and clinically significant deviations from nurse-recorded pain scores, suggesting that capturing patient-reported postsurgical pain is an important opportunity to collect information to support the overall medication strategy.