NURSES’ KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICES IN PAIN ASSESSMENT AMONG CRITICALLY ILL NON-VERBAL PATIENTS IN THE CRITICAL CARE UNIT, KENYATTA NATIONAL HOSPITAL,KENYA
Keywords:
Pain assessment, Critical Care, non-verbal patients, Knowledge, Practice.Abstract
Background: Intensive Care Unit patients are often unable to report the degree of pain due to sedation and mechanical ventilation and rely on the nurses to diagnose their pain intensity. Therefore, nurses should have adequate knowledge and skills in identifying the patients’ hidden pain.
Objective: To determine nurses’ knowledge and practices in pain assessment among critically ill non-verbal patients admitted in the critical care unit.
Method: A cross-sectional study design was used. A self-administered
questionnaire was used to collect data on 72 critical care nurses working in the main critical care unit. A data abstraction tool was used to extract data from patients’ files at the end of each participants’ twelve-hour shift. Data was analysed using the R software version 4.1.2. Descriptive statistics, odds ratios and 95% confidence intervals were used to report knowledge /practices and associated factors in pain assessment.
Results: Majority, 87.5%(n=63) of the nurses had inadequate knowledge. Pain assessment practice was poor with 94.4%(n=68) having overall poor practice. Majority of the nurses did not use a valid pain assessment tool attributed reasons being lack of pain assessment tools and lack of knowledge in use of the tools. Social demographic characteristics assessed had no significant relationship with pain assessment practices. Sociodemographic characteristics including female gender(OR=0.13, 95% CI:0.01-1.16, p=0.096), higher diploma(OR=0.25, 95% CI:0.009-6.69, p=0.342), older age(40-49yrs)(OR=0.12, 95% CI:0.005-1.48, p=0.107) and years of nursing work experience(OR=0.35, 95% CI:0.02-3.01, p=0.382) were not significantly associated with nurses’ pain assessment practices.
Conclusion: The study found inadequate knowledge in pain assessment and poor pain assessment practices among the critical care nurses. Critical care nurses require Continuous Professional Development programmes that target pain assessment in critically ill non-verbal patients.
