[Quality of postoperative analgesia protocols in a local hospital].

Objectives: To demonstrate that the introduction of a nursing based Acute Pain Service (APS) leads to better postoperative pain management and a decrease in treatment-related adverse events. To assess the quality criteria of postoperative pain control and discuss their compliance.
Materials and Methods: A total of 116 major elective surgeries were assessed between November and December 2010 and compared to those collected between November and December 2007 before the introduction of the APS. The following variables were studied: sociodemographic data, type of surgery and postoperative analgesia, pain ratings (numeric verbal scale- NVS) per nursing shift (48 hours), compliance of quality criteria in pain management, and a patient satisfaction survey.
Results and Conclusions: Despite there being a higher number of surgeries related to expected moderate-intense pain, better scores in pain ratings were obtained both at rest (86.1% ± 11.2 vs 50.7% ± 12.1 NVS ≤ 3, p=.0001) and during activity (73.9% ± 10.8 vs 50.1% ± 12.1 NVS ≤ 5, p=.0026) in surgical wards, but treatment-related side effects did not decrease with the analgesics and there was no increase treatment-related patient satisfaction. The data analysis showed that there is still a deficiency in the recording of the pain scores by nursing shift (70 ± 6.1 vs 40 ± 11.9, p=.0002).
(Copyright © 2012 Sociedad Española de Anestesiología, Reanimación y Terapéutica del Dolor. Published by Elsevier España. All rights reserved.)