Nursing Pain Management Essay

Describe the effectiveness of the nursing management of pain for a selected client at the institution.

The International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) defines pain as “an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that is associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage” (Grimm, 2014). Pain, however, is much more than a physical sensation caused by a single entity. It is subjective and highly individual, a complex mechanism with physical, emotional, and cognitive components. Pain cannot be objectively measured as only the person who is suffering knows how the experience feels. For these reasons, McCaffery defined pain as “whatever the experiencing person says it is and whenever he says it

During assessment, she stated that she usually experiences pain intermittently on the left side of her body, as well as her lower back and that her hip feels dislocated. The patient was not sure of how to rate her pain on a scale with 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest, however, she stated that the pain worsens with movement and the pain is not relieved whenever she receives her medication. The medications given to her are: panadine and voltaren. The patient also states that there are no associated factors with the pain.

Inadequately managed pain can lead to adverse physical and psychological patient outcomes for individual patients and their families. In nursing care, unrelieved pain reduces patient mobility, resulting in complications such as deep vein thrombosis, pulmonary embolus, and pneumonia. Continuous, unrelieved pain also affects the psychological state of the patient and family members. Common psychological responses to pain include anxiety and depression. The inability to escape from pain may create a sense of helplessness and even hopelessness, which may predispose the patient to a more chronic depression. Patients who have experienced inadequate pain management may be reluctant to seek medical care for other health problems. Hence, in order to effectively manage the patient’s complaint of pain, the nurse