Attitudes of Patients, Housestaff, and Nurses Toward Postoperative Analgesic Care

A survey was carried out among housestaff and nurses involved with postoperative patient care to assess their knowledge of analgesics and their attitudes toward postoperative analgesic care. Only one-fifth of the respondents prescribed for complete pain relief. There were some misconceptions about adding other drugs to narcotic analgesics as well as fear of the addictive properties of these narcotics. The respondents lacked confidence about their knowledge of narcotic analgesics. Fear of respiratory depression was less prominent. Nine percent of the physicians and 31% of the nurses believed that response to a placebo indicates factitious pain. Fifty-four percent of the physicians and 74% of the nurses believed that patients receive adequate pain relief. Eighty-one patients were questioned on their beliefs about pain and its relief. Sixty-six of these were monitored postoperatively to assess the effectiveness of pain relief, which was judged by the authors to be ineffective (i.e., moderate to severe pain at the peak of analgesia) in 41%. Seventy-five percent of the patients reported that their overall postoperative pain relief had been adequate. There was no correlation between the amount of analgesic required postoperatively and either the degree to which patients believed pain builds character or the degree to which they rated themselves sensitive to pain. This study emphasizes the need for better and more comprehensive training of housestaff and nurses in analgesic care.