Do nurses provide adequate postoperative pain relief?

The inadequate educational background of nurses fails to prepare them to assess and control postoperative pain effectively. Ineffective pain control occurs because of the confusion over the complex nature of pain, a reluctance to accept patients' verbal reports of pain, ignorance of the relationship of pain to tissue damage, and the lack of a coherent framework for assessing pain. Nurses need improved formal training in methods of pain control at all educational levels. Nurses must recognize their own knowledge limitations and seek to improve their awareness of current research and improvements in pain control so that these can be implemented in clinical practice.