Patient satisfaction with their pain management and comfort level after open heart surgery

Objective: The aim of this study is to determine patient satisfaction with pain management and comfort levels after undergoing open heart surgery. Design: This descriptive study was performed between January 31 and April 29, 2011. Setting: The study was conducted in the cardiovascular surgery clinic of Region Training-Research hospital in Erzurum, Turkey. Subjects: Fifty two patients (32 males, 20 females; mean age 58.4 years; range 25 to 77 years) who had undergone open heart surgery were included in the study. Main outcome measure(s): The patient data was collected using Personal Information Form, Pain Satisfaction Surveys and General Comfort Scales at the time of discharge. The Pain Satisfaction Survey is a survey tool which was developed by the ‘American Pain Society’ in 1991. The General Comfort Scale was developed by Kolcaba in 1992 and its validity and reliability in a Turkish setting was tested by Kuğuoğlu and Karabacak in 2004. Results: In this study, 61.5% of the patients underwent coronary artery bypass graft surgery, 30.7% aorta and/or mitral valve replacement and 7.7% aneurysm repair. The mean scores of pain intensity immediately after surgery, at first post-operative ambulation, at 24 hours before discharge and at discharge were 7.07+2.6, 6.71+2.7, 6.32+2.4 and 4.57+2.3, respectively. Most subjects (88.5%) reported a wait time of 15 min as the longest time they had to wait for pain medication and patient satisfaction with pain management was found to be high. The mean score of comfort level at discharge was 3.16+0.2 and there was no statistically significant difference between the comfort level and pain rating at discharge (r=-0.225, p>0.05). Conclusion: It was found that pain intensity gradually decreased as patients neared hospital discharge and their overall satisfaction with the nurses’ pain management was high.