Pilot Study: The Effect of Education on the Knowledge and Attitudes of Nurses Regarding Pain

Abstract

Pain affects more than 76 million adults in the United States and is the number one reason people seek medical attention (Joint Commission, 2013, Zacharoff, Pujol, & Corsini, 2010). Although pain management is considered a top priority in health care, it continues to be inadequately addressed (Duke, Haas, Yarbrough, & Northam, 2013). The basis for nursing intervention and a critical component of effective pain management is pain knowledge and assessment (Al-Shaer, Hill, and Anderson, 2011). A nurse’s perception of pain can be influenced by their knowledge and past experiences of pain, the patient’s demographic (Manias, Botti, & Bucknall, 2002) as well as the nurse’s years of experience and degree preparation (Al-Shaer, Hill, & Anderson, 2011). The purpose of this quality improvement pilot study is to determine if the presentation of a three hour class titled Pain Types, Assessment, and Management will enhance nurse’s knowledge regarding pain. In this single group pretest/posttest design, the 37 item Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain (KASRP) survey tool (Ferrell & McCaffrey, 2012) was used for both the pretest and posttest. A paired-samples t-test was conducted to evaluate the impact of pain education intervention on the scores of the KASRP. There was a statistically significant increase in KASRP scores from the pretest (M=21.72, SD=3.46) to the post test (M=23.50, SD =3.66), t (17) = -2.618, p <.05 (two- tailed). The mean increase in KASRP scores was 1.77 with a confidence interval from 3.21 to 3.45. Future educational offerings as well as quality improvement projects will be generated based upon the findings.