Assessing an Educational Program to Improve Documentation and Reduce Pain in Hospitalized Patients

Abstract

Few experimental studies have evaluated the efficacy of continuing educational programs aimed at the improvement of nurses’ pain-management skills. This study assessed whether a standardized educational program aimed at nurses could increase the use of the Numeric Rating Scale-11 in both documenting and reducing postoperative pain-intensity levels in hospitalized surgical patients. The study had a quasi-experimental pre- and post-intervention design. Data were collected from records of surgical patients prior to and after the standardized educational program was completed. There were no significant differences between pre- and post-intervention groups in terms of either pain-documentation frequency or pain-intensity level. The study showed no increase in the frequency of postoperative pain documentation and no reduction of surgical patients’ postoperative pain-intensity level. This finding indicates that the standardized educational program on postoperative pain management was insufficient to bring about changes in clinical practice.