CET

Evidence based pain nursing

Speakers

Abstract
Chair: Emma Briggs, United Kingdom
 
Appraising and using pain-related evidence
Emma Briggs, United Kingdom
 
Effective clinical decision-making is based on person-centred, evidence-based pain management.
Nurses working in pain management need good critical appraisal skills to evaluate a range of sources
to directly inform their care and influence the practice of others. This session will help attendees to:

• Discuss the sources of scientific pain-related evidence
• Outline the principles of assessing different sources of evidence
• Signpost you to further resources on critical appraisal and embedding evidence-based
practice.

This session addresses the following competencies in the European Core Curriculum for the Diploma
in Pain Nursing:

7.3.1 Describe the principles of assessing scientific pain-related evidence, including:
Grades of evidence and methodologies and difficulties of combining evidence as in
systematic reviews and meta-analyses/metasyntheses, Databases such as Cochrane
database of systematic reviews, Influence of bias, chance, multiple comparisons and
confounding variables in studies, Publication bias
7.3.2 Critically interpret and summarise advanced evidence-based knowledge with patients
and the interprofessional team understanding the strengths and limitations of pain
management strategies
 
Collecting and generating pain-related data (research and audit)
Jacqueline van Dijk, Netherlands
 
Reduction in postoperative pain increases patient satisfaction and enables better mobilization and coughing. Therefore, pain management needs to be continuously improved. Problems are often caused not only by medical issues but also by organization and hospital structure. Internal benchmarking is an important tool to improve the quality of pain management and should be used in clinical routine. External benchmarking is often more difficult; data have to be collected in the same way.

An audit is a fast way of benchmarking using ‘real-time’ data and quickly use findings to create practice change. Research is meant to generate new knowledge and takes more time than an audit. When organizations need answers fast, an audit may be used; conducting research is more time consuming. Research projects need approval from a research ethics committee; ethical standards and patient privacy protection apply to audit processes and research projects. In this lecture, some examples of collecting and generating pain-related data will be given.
 
Strategies for improving practice
Martin Galligan, United Kingdom

Q&A