The Role of Nursing Staff in Pain Management of Patients with Cancer

Abstract

Introduction: Nurses spend more time with patients than any other member of the healthcare team. They play a critical, active and very important part in controlling cancer patients' pain and alleviating suffering. This study aimed to explore current nursing practices in the oncology hospital and the level of knowledge they possess about pain and its management in clinical settings.

Methods: This is a transversal type study developed on the basis of cluster sampling type on nurses in the Oncology Hospital, Tirana. The study was conducted in the period 2016-2018 and the sample consisted of 119 nurses.

Results: In total, 119 questionnaires were completed by oncology hospital nurses. Regarding the gender of was seen a predominance of women nurses compared to men 78.15% and 21.85% respectively. Nurses between the age 30 until to 39 years old were 34.4% of participants. Nurses of different gender, education level, and place of birth showed statistically significant difference. Only 23.5 % of nurses had pain training and education, and less than half of nurses (43.7%) had 5-10 years in oncology hospital. In this study, knowledge and practice of nurse’s participant on non-and pharmacological pain management were more than 55%. Related to the pain assessment 36.1% were based on the information provided by the patients, while 31.1% of nurses had used the visual analogue scale for pain assessment. According to the ways of pain management, almost 76.5% of nurses think that the best ways of pain management were pharmacology and 71.4% selected opioid analgesic medication while 28.6% selected non-opioid analgesic medication. Contacting the physician for the prescription of opioids was cited as the main delaying process by 43.7% of participants.

Conclusions: The results of the study demonstrated that the nurses had limited knowledge of pain management, because of non-training courses for consequence all of it was associated with poor attitude toward pain management. Most of them did not have formal training in pain management either at the local level. Many of them are familiar with oral route of administration of opioids but still the logistics of administration is not clear to them. Nowadays training and education in pain management is a necessity for medical staff especially for nurses because the adequate knowledge is vital in the provision of quality pain management to patients.