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Please the JCAHO with your pain management program

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, July 1, 2005

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Scenario: A woman lies in her hospital room after undergoing surgery. She has expressed to her husband and to the hospital staff that she is in pain.

The healthcare providers attempt to relieve her pain with medication, but upon reassessment she reports feeling no differently. The patient continually reports the same level of pain while staff try different medications to ease her discomfort. Later in the treatment program the staff found out by chance that the woman uses illicit drugs. How could the staff have treated the patient's pain more effectively?

Answer: According to the 2005 JCAHO National Patient Safety Goals, hospitals must reconcile all medications a patient is taking. This includes over-the-counter, herbal, and illicit drugs, in addition to alcohol and tobacco use. Any of these substances, if unknown, can react differently in a patient's body and interact incorrectly with pain medication.

Editor's note: The above excerpt is from the new online course, "Nursing CE Series: Understanding What the JCAHO Wants to see in Your Pain Management Program." For more information on this and other courses for nursing credit in our Nursing library, go to www.hcprofessor.com and click on Nursing CE Series.

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