Survey workgroup pain AEOP: nurses' knowledge and attitudes towards pain

Abstract

Nurses have a key role in pain management. Pain assessment, immediate intervention and evaluation of the clinical results are essential for an effective pain management. Many nurses may not be prepared to take a critical role due to lack of knowledge and individual attitudes towards pain. In this way, the Workgroup Dor from AEOP (Associação Portuguesa de Enfermagem Oncológica
- Portuguese Cancer Nurses Association) decided to research what knowledge and attitudes towards pain are possessed by the members of this association. To accomplish this, we applied the questionnaire (adapted version) “Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain” (KASRP), already validated in several similar international studies. The results of the 87 questionnaires were satisfactory, since about 79.5% of the questions related to the knowledge and attitudes were correctly answered. However, some of these results shown there are still some shortcomings, for example in the field of pharmacology. Thus, the Workgroup Dor is already working on education strategies and training in the area of pain, intended to give answers to some of these gaps. It also intends to proceed to translation, linguistic and cultural adaptation of KASRP into Portuguese, and later extend this research to a larger sample of nurses. This article is the result of a Poster communication presented at the “Jornadas da Primavera in Évora” in March 2015 and an oral communication at AEOP7, both works awarded 1st prize.