Role of patient education in postoperative pain management
Intended for healthcare professionals
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Role of patient education in postoperative pain management

Brynja Ingadóttir Assistant professor, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland
Sigridur Zoëga Assistant professor, University of Iceland, Reykjavik, Iceland

Postoperative pain continues to be a significant issue in healthcare, with a considerable proportion of patients experiencing severe pain after surgery and finding pain management at home challenging. There are several barriers to effective pain management, involving both patients and healthcare professionals. Patient education may be a useful way to overcome many of these barriers. This article outlines the four stages of the education process, which can be used to provide patient education: assessing the patient’s educational needs and potential barriers to learning; setting educational objectives; teaching; and evaluating the patient’s learning. This article discusses the issue of postoperative pain and how structured patient education, from admission to discharge, provided by skilled healthcare professionals, may improve postoperative recovery.

Nursing Standard. 32, 2, 50-63. doi: 10.7748/ns.2017.e10939

Correspondence

brynjain@landspitali.is

Peer review

This article has been subject to external double-blind peer review and checked for plagiarism using automated software

Conflict of interest

None declared

Received: 30 June 2017

Accepted: 18 July 2017

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