Nurses' perceptions of pain management for older-patients in the Emergency Department: A qualitative study

作者：Gorawara Bhat Rita^*; Wong Alexandra; Dale William; Hogan Teresita

来源：Patient Education and Counseling, 2017, 100(2): 231-241.

DOI：10.1016/j.pec.2016.08.019

• Pain assessment
• Emergency department
• Older patients
• Nurses professional experiences

Objectives: 1) Identify themes arising from nurses' perceptions of assessing older-patients' pain; 2) use themes to guide development of optimal interventions to improve quality of pain assessment in the emergency department (ED).
Methods: Nurse interviews (n = 20) were conducted until theme saturation. They were transcribed, coded, and analyzed using qualitative methodology.
Results: Two major themes-nurse 'challenges' and 'strategies' to overcome challenges, and their subthemes - classified as 'patient-related' or 'system-related,' were salient in nurses' perceptions. Strategies nurses reported for managing challenges were based in their own professional lived experiences.
Discussion and conclusion: A 2 x 2 framework was developed to conceptualize challenges, strategies, subthemes and their classifications, yielding 4 typologies comprising challenge types matched with appropriate strategy types. While emergent challenges and strategies are corroborated in the literature, the present study is the first to develop a scheme of typologies beneficial for guiding the development of optimal interventions to improve the quality of assessing pain in older-patients.
Practice implications: The typology framework can guide the development of pain assessment tools and the needed combinations for assessing multidimensional pain in older-patients. Using the present findings, a new clinical intervention was shown to significantly improve pain management for olderpatients in the ED.

• 出版日期2017-2