Role of patient education in postoperative pain management

Postoperative pain continues to be a significant issue in healthcare, with a considerable proportion of patients experiencing severe pain after surgery and finding pain management at home challenging. There are several barriers to effective pain management, involving both patients and healthcare professionals. Patient education may be a useful way to overcome many of these barriers. This article outlines the four stages of the education process, which can be used to provide patient education: assessing the patient's educational needs and potential barriers to learning; setting educational objectives; teaching; and evaluating the patient's learning. This article discusses the issue of postoperative pain and how structured patient education, from admission to discharge, provided by skilled healthcare professionals, may improve postoperative recovery.