Authors (including presenting author) :
Yik TW (1), Lau WH (1), Tam WH (1), Yeung SL (1), Yu LF (1), Wong KK (1)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Orthopedics and Traumatology, Kwong Wah Hospital
Introduction :
Prolonged hospitalization due to low back pain entails substantial medical costs and reduces the patients’ quality of life. Prescribing analgesics based on the duration and intensity of pain is a common practice. However, insufficient knowledge of various analgesics, concern about adverse drug reactions and doubts about drug efficacy are barriers leading to poor medication adherence. As health educators, nurses can improve patients’ compliance, empower them to cope with the illness and achieve a better clinical outcome.
Objectives :
(1) to minimize the misunderstanding related to pharmacological pain management through patient education and investigate the influence, (2) to facilitate the pain relief and help patient regaining the ability to perform activities of daily living, (3) to shorten the length of hospital stay and reduce the healthcare financial cost
Methodology :
A one-group pre-test and post-test design was applied. Subjects were (1) diagnosed with low back pain in KWH A&E or referred to the patient list of Integrated Chinese and Western Medicine program (2) greater or equal to 18 years old (3) fluent in Cantonese. A validated questionnaire was used to evaluate outcome measures after a 15-minute individual patient education with a booklet.
Result & Outcome :
From August to September 2022, 40 patients were recruited by using convenient sampling method. Paired-samples t test reflected that the face-to-face nurse-led patient education programme did elicit a statistically significant change in knowledge of pain and its pharmacological management in individuals with existing low back pain (t39 = 13.550, p < 0.001), though a small effect size (d = 2.14) was calculated. On average, the score of post-test were 4.525 marks higher than that of pre-test (95% CI, 3.85 to 5.20).
Patients’ knowledge of pharmacological pain management increased after the nurse-led education, which could increase the analgesics adherence, hence to have effective pain control and improve patients’ quality of life.
