• To refresh your knowledge of the principles of pain assessment and management
• To identify useful pain assessment and management tools and resources
• To enhance your awareness of the adverse effects and complications of opioids
Pain is a distressing, subjective and complex phenomenon that all nurses will encounter in their clinical practice. Effective pain management requires nurses to undertake a structured assessment to identify the probable causes of pain and guide management. Interventions used to reduce pain can be varied and multimodal. This article provides an overview of pain including its definition, classifications, assessment and management. It emphasises the importance of a person-centred approach to care which reflects Margo McCaffery’s seminal quote that pain is ‘whatever the experiencing person says it is’.
Nursing Standard. doi: 10.7748/ns.2022.e11936
Peer reviewThis article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software
Correspondence Conflict of interestThe author has acted as a paid adviser and speaker for Grünenthal UK and Kyowa Kirin
Cox F (2022) An overview of pain assessment and management. Nursing Standard. doi: 10.7748/ns.2022.e11936
Published online: 30 March 2022
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