- Pain following day surgery
- Background
- Patients can be reluctant to take medication
- Education is key
- Written information should be supplied
- Some techniques depend on skill +/or surgical preference so their discussion may need to be done on admission rather than in pre-op
- Pain measurement
- VRS/VAS are appropriate scales
- Pain strategies
- Multimodal analgesia
- Nerve blocks acceptable
- Morphine
- Increases readmission rate
- Causes N&V
- Increases length of stay
- May be useful in low dose as part of multimodal analgesia
- Unit should have regular audit around agreed standards
- % discharged with analgesics
- Incidence of 'severe pain' in first 48hrs
- Incidence of no pain or mild pain
- % satisfied with management of their pain
- Discharge medication
- Consider protocol or analgesia ladders
- Allows nurses to check drugs and contraindications with patients
- Easy to prescribe
- Allows audit of outcomes
- Reduces number of drugs stored on the day unit
- Can be altered over time to optimise regime
- Patients should be pre-loaded prior to discharge
- CEACCP
Link:ceaccp.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/2/48.full.pdf