Dealing with Pain Management and Offering Comfort

One the greatest challenges to a health care professional are providing comfort to a patient. Promoting physical and psychological comfort is a key part in a nurse's role in providing top care for a patient. Lack of comfort can be a result of many factor's and can take many forms including but not limited to anxiety, constipation, depression, diarrhea, fatigue, fear, grief, headaches, hopelessness, muscle cramping, nausea, pain, sadness, and/or vomiting.

As a nurse you should pursue methods to assist your client in achieving relief from discomfort, to help your patient you should be able to listen to your patient, recognize the signals of discomfort even when your patient is unable or unwilling to verbalize them to you, be diligent in your efforts to relieve these discomforts, be willing to pursue alternative interventions when conventional means are not successful.

There are many types of pain from mild or severe, chronic or acute, intermittent or intractable, burning, dull or sharp, precisely or poorly localized, referred, radiating, phantom, intractable. As a nurse it will become part of your job to have your patient describe the type of paint they are experiencing and the location in which they are experiencing the pain in.

Acute Pain is pain that is classified as short term pain lasting less than 6 months, this type of pain can be intense. Acute pain can generally provide a warning to the patient of actual or potential tissue damage. This type of pain also floods the body with epinephrine, this is what gives the body the flight or fight response.

Chronic pain is that is classified as long term pain lasting longer than 6 months, this type of pain can be continuous or sporadic and be just as intense as acute pain. Chronic pain does not provide as a warning sigh to tissue damage but may be due to damage that has already occurred. Due to chronic pain your patient may develop certain type's symptoms such as depression, sleep disturbances, fatigue and changes in social interactions to name a few.

Nursing Interventions:Tighten wrinkled bed linens, Reposition drainage tubes or other objections that could disrupt the patients comfort, place warm blankets within reach of the patient, check temperatures of any hot or cold applications, including room temperatures and bath temperatures , loosen an constricting bandages or clothing, position patients into anatomic alignment, insure patient is in comfortable positioning, position patient correctly onto bedpan, lift patient up in bed instead of pulling, prevent constipation by encouraging your patient has the correct diet and fluid intake and exercise and providing all doctor prescribed medicine in a timely fashion.

Sources: Education and Training