Nurses' perceptions of pain assessment and pain management for patients with myocardial infarction in a coronary care unit

• Background: Pain is one of the most common medical problems that occur in hospitals; in spite of its incidence, there are many patients who suffer with untreated pain. Unrelieved pain can negatively impact a person's quality of life, causing activity life disturbances like psychological distress; anxiety, depression and lack of sleep. Cardiovascular disorder is a significant global health problem, which accounts for the death of a third of people of the world. Chest pain is the most common symptom of heart attacks. However, some patients will present with pain in other areas like pain in arm, shoulder, neck, teeth, jaw and back pain. In literature there is little observational research to investigate actual pain assessment and management practices of critical care nurses in routine clinical practice for patients with myocardial infarction. Aim:The aim of this study was to explore nurses' perceptions regarding pain assessment and pain management for patients with Myocardial Infarction in a coronary care unit.Methodology: The study was a qualitative design, using semi structured interviews. Ten critical care nurses who work in a coronary care unit were interviewed. The author used a qualitative content analysis approach to analyze the interviews by doing the manual analyzing and having different themes.Result: Three main themes were indentified in this study and each theme had different categories which are presented as the following: Dealing with patients who have myocardial infarction pain is challenging; there are different approaches in pain assessment including subjective and the third theme is Holistic approaches to pain management.Conclusion: Critical care nurses need more skills and knowledge to practice good pain assessment and effective pain management when they deal with patients who have myocardial infarction pain. In this study patients who do not verbalized their pain lack the proper assessment of pain due to inability to communicate their pain. More research is needed in this area of pain assessment and management especially for patients with myocardial infarction.

Ämnesord

MEDICIN OCH HÄLSOVETENSKAP  -- Hälsovetenskap -- Omvårdnad (hsv//swe)

MEDICAL AND HEALTH SCIENCES  -- Health Sciences -- Nursing (hsv//eng)

Nyckelord

Pain

Myocardial infarction

Critical care

Nursing

Coronary care unit

Perception

Pain assessment

Pain management

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)