Session Information
Session Title: AA 2021 Virtual Posters - Pain and Spine Medicine
Session Time: None. Available on demand.
Disclosures: Noel Blanco, DO: No financial relationships or conflicts of interest
Objective: Explore if a patient’s pain and their family’s perception of the pain can be improved with pain education from admission to discharge.
Design: Retrospective cohort with a comparison groupSetting : Freestanding acute rehabilitation hospitalParticipants : All discharged patients were provided the Patient Experience survey by NRC Health. We used survey results from 120 subjects from October 2020 to March 2021 as the baseline metrics. Our intervention group included 44 patients between April and June of 2021.
Interventions: The healthcare staff discussed pain management with patients and/or family members. We educated the patients and family members about the VAS pain scale, medication options, therapy, nonpharmacologic strategies, and pain expectations, signs, and symptoms.
Main Outcome Measures: Metrics were collected from a specific yes or no question: “Staff did everything to help with pain?” This question was answered objectively by the patient and/or patient’s family assuming that the healthcare staff did everything possible to help with the patient’s pain.
Results: Compared to the baseline data there was improvement of perceived pain control in the group that received consistent pain education. The percentage of satisfaction of pain control from the surveys was 55% from October 2020 to March 2021. With our intervention, the percentage improved to 57.1%, 66.7%, and 72.2% from April to June 2021, which had no statistical significance but an upward trend in patients’ pain satisfaction.Conclusions: Active discussion of pain management with patients and their family at admission, throughout the hospitalization, as well as reinforcing at time of discharge can lead to higher satisfaction respective to pain control. Assuming all other variables are equal, the most notable change was educating patients and their family members about the pharmacology of pain medications, signs, symptoms of pain and educating about pain expectations. Future studies can incorporate the participation of nursing and other ancillary healthcare staff in pain education.
Level of Evidence: Level IV
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
Blanco N, Roza R, Chen L, Corrales AG, Ho C. How Can We Improve Pain Tolerance for Patients during Inpatient Rehab Stay? [abstract]. PM R. 2021; 13(S1)(suppl 1). https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/how-can-we-improve-pain-tolerance-for-patients-during-inpatient-rehab-stay/. Accessed October 31, 2024.« Back to AAPM&R Annual Assembly 2021
PM&R Meeting Abstracts - https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/how-can-we-improve-pain-tolerance-for-patients-during-inpatient-rehab-stay/