Role modeling: an educational strategy to promote effective cancer pain management

Successful pain management is a crucial element in the nursing care of the patient with cancer. Among the many problems underlying poorly managed pain, one prominent concern is healthcare professionals' lack of current knowledge. Although educational programs are an established method of increasing knowledge, specific programming strategies may have a more significant impact on knowledge retention. This quasiexperimental study used role modeling as an educational method to improve knowledge retention. A purposive sample of 20 RNs participated in an educational program in which a lecture-only format was used for the control group and a lecture format plus a role-modeling component was used for the experimental group. An oncology pain management assessment tool was administered in a pretest/post-test design with repeated measures. A one-tailed t-test for gain scores was used to test the hypothesis. Mean change scores between groups were similar. Future studies are needed to further analyze the impact of role modeling on similarly matched, but larger, groups.