Pain assessment and management- what do student know?

[Eeducator]

Hi Everyone,
I am a graduate student working on my capstone project. I'm looking at the knowledge of nursing students regarding pain assessment and management. Would love to hear the communities thoughts on the following question. Does current education practices prepare nurses to adequately assess and manage pain? I'd be interested to hear from educators on how much you spend on pain in your curriculum and do you fill it is adequate? It would be interesting to hear from new graduate nurses and how comfortable you feel with pain assessment and management. In my research I found that on average nurses spend about 40% of their shift addressing pain, however NCLEX exam focuses very little on pain management and assessment.

Looking forward to reading your comments!
Thanks in advance,
Eeducator

[amygarside]

I think it would really depend on the nursing school. At present there are aspects that need to be addressed as well especially the training of student nurses. So, I think addressing pain should be one of the priority of nursing schools so that they will adequately equipped the new nurses.

[Eeducator]

Thanks for your reply. What was your education experience regarding pain. Do you think it adequately prepared you? Which do you think is more of a problem, assessment or management?

[Jhawka19]

Now i graduated 20 years ago and can't really address the question as it is really to new grads, but I will add this.... Pain assessment is one thing in the adult world and another in the pediatric world. I know we use several scales for pain assessment depending on the developmental age of the child. I am not sure how much time is currently provided to the pediatric scales however.

[Eeducator]

Jhawka19-
You bring up a good point about assessing differently in the pediatric population. I'm not sure how much time is spent in curriculum, however its my assumption that because it is a child that healthcare professionals do a better job of managing pain. I often wonder if we do a poor job with adults because a.) we think they can handle it better (it's expected) b.) we think those who request pain meds on a frequent basis as drug seeking c.) and finally maybe we aren't receiving enough education.
Thoughts?

[mblome]

As a floor nurse, we are drilled constantly to assess and reassess pain levels due to Joint Commission and other standards. As an adjunct clinical instructor, I ask the students to assess pain levels. It is our hospitals policy to assess and reassess constantly. Not sure what educators are saying in lectures or classroom time about the topic so don't know how to answer you there. That is interesting about NCLEX but they probably want to focus more on skills and patient safety. I probably was not much help answering your question! Good luck on your project!

[jsones]

I think it is addressed buy falls lower on priority list during clinicals when instructors are making sure other skills are observed. I think it is becoming more and more important due to patient satisfaction and how are we making patients feel better. Good luck.