Assess patient's signs and symptoms of pain behavioral cues and administer pain medication as prescribed. Monitor and record the medication's effectiveness and adverse effects. Assessment allows for care plan modification, as needed.
Use a pain scale when assessing pain. Although pain is subjective, when using the scale you can compare patient's perception of pain from one assessment to another.
Using a pain flowchart, record the time of medication administration and results of pain assessment every hour until the next dose to monitor the therapy's effectiveness.- Return to patient in 30 minutes to check intervention effectiveness. This establishes trusting-caring relationship that encourages accurate communication.
- Demonstrate acceptance when patient reveals pain. This helps establish a trusting relationship with patient and encourages open expression of feelings. A patient may deny pain to appear “good.”
- Perform comfort measures to promote relaxation, such as massage, bathing, repositioning, and relaxation techniques. These measures reduce muscle tension or spasm, redistribute pressure on body parts, and help patient focus on nonpain-related subjects.
- Plan activities with patient to provide distraction, such as reading, crafts, television, and visits, to help patient focus on nonpain-related matters.
- Provide patient with information to help increase pain tolerance; for example, reasons for pain and length of time it will last. This educates patient and encourages compliance in trying alternative pain relief measures.
- Manipulate the environment to promote periods of uninterrupted rest. This promotes health, well-being, and increased energy level important to pain relief.
- Apply heat or cold, as ordered (specify), to minimize or relieve pain.
- Help patient into a comfortable position and use pillows to splint or support painful areas as appropriate to reduce muscle tension or spasm and to redistribute pressure on body parts.
- Collaborate with patient in administering prescribed analgesics when alternative methods of pain control are inadequate. Gaining patient's trust and involvement helps ensure compliance and may reduce medication intake.
- Encourage patient to report which pain relief measures prove most effective to give patient a sense of control and promote effective modification of therapy.
- Try to anticipate the onset of pain. Provide prescribed medication before painful procedures such as dressing changes or activities such as deep breathing. Careful pain management can improve relief and may enable the patient to cope better with procedures.
Consider the services of a psychiatric mental health professional to help patient and staff members establish a realistic plan to resolve the problem. Patients who remain helpless, unmotivated, uncooperative, and manipulative are self-destructive. Underlying causes should be explored.- Discuss with patient possible association between exacerbation of pain and patient's identified stressors. This helps patient explore exacerbating emotional or environmental factors that may affect pain.
- Ask patient to help establish goals and develop plan for pain control. This gives patient a sense of control.
- Provide patient with positive feedback about progress toward reaching goals to improve motivation and encourage compliance.
- Spend at least 15 minutes/shift allowing patient to express feelings, which will help give patient a sense of control.
- When possible, allow patient to use alternative pain treatments from patient's culture (such as acupuncture) as a substitute for or complement to Western treatments to promote nonpharmacologic pain management.
Suggested NIC Interventions
Analgesic Administration; Anxiety Reduction; Coping Enhancement; Emotional Support; Hope Instillation; Medication Management; Pain Management; Positioning; Sleep Enhancement |