Common language positions caregivers to improve pain treatment: DOC -- OMNIway November 29, 2007

Common language positions caregivers to improve pain treatment: DOC
Thursday November 29, 2007 -- Deron Hamel
The first step to improving pain treatment and increasing comfort for residents in long-term care is to ensure everyone concerned — residents and their families, staff members and the community — is at the same level of understanding the meaning of pain.

“How do they define pain? Everybody’s definition is probably different, and that’s why you have to get all your stakeholders involved,” says Sandra Brow, director of care at Pleasant Meadow Manor in Norwood.

Not only does educating stakeholders and creating a common language help further the understanding of pain, it also spreads awareness to the community about the importance of identifying and treating pain, Brow notes.

In an effort to better foster effective pain treatment, Pleasant Meadow is working at implementing the Registered Nurses Association of Ontario’s (RNAO) best practices guidelines for pain and comfort.

The guidelines are communication tools used to create a common level of understanding about what pain is and how to effectively treat it.

Pleasant Meadow is in the first year of a two-year mandate to bring these guidelines to the home.

If a resident in long-term care who is unable to verbally communicate begins showing signs of agitation, there’s a good chance the individual is doing so because they are experiencing pain, she adds.

“This is their way of reaching out; this is their way of communicating, and that’s where our supportive measures come in,” says Brow.

As part of another mandate, Pleasant Meadow began implementing the Palliative Performance Scale (PPS) and the Edmonton Symptom Assessment Scale (ESAS) in October. The PPS uses a common scale for gauging the end-of-life stages for residents who are palliative. ESAS is a nine-category scale used to help caregivers measure levels of discomfort in residents who are palliative.

When used in conjunction with the RNAO’s guidelines for pain and comfort, these tools will help create a better understanding of pain management through common language.

So what do these common language tools mean for the future pain identification and treatment?

“It’s encouraging,” says Brow. “It puts a freshness on the way we look at things, because it’s a new angle.”

In an effort to bring you independent news about the OMNI community, this story was prepared by a third party news provider, Axiom News Services. It has not been subject to prior editorial approval by OMNI Health Care.