Implementing a hospital-wide pain management strategy

The purpose of this article is to describe the process of undertaking a large scale nursing pain management initiative, that we entitled "Pain Month." Several educational resources and strategies were employed in an effort to increase nurse's knowledge on the subject of pain management. Pre and post patient satisfaction surveys were conducted to test the effect of the education on actual pain management. The results showed improvements in actual pain scores and in satisfaction with pain management; however, several more improvements were shown to be necessary to achieve excellent pain management for patients. Follow-up initiatives such as a pain resource nurse program, an interdisciplinary pain committee and continued, patient surveys have been implemented to address some of these existing issues.