Explaining post op pain to patients

[ReginaPhalange]

Hello,

I work in PACU and have found that most of our patients have unrealistic expectations when it comes to post op pain. Many believe that surgery will not hurt because their doctor told them it's a "painless" or "minor" surgery. It puts us in a bind of having to educate a sedated patient while explaining that the pain medication will not alleviate the pain entirely. How does your facility teach patients preop about post op pain? Shouldn't this be handled by the physicians during their preop visit? Thanks!!

[NicuGal, MSN, RN]

I had a lap. chole and my surgeon was pretty up front with the shoulder/neck pain. They loaded me up with fentanyl and a vicodin for the road, thank goodness lol I thought...well, this isn't so bad, huh. But those first few days...oh my goooodneessss!!!! I wanted to stay glued to the couch and suck down the whole bottle of vicodin, but I knew better and got up, walked and took a hot shower. But it was miserable and I am no slouch when it comes to pain lol Truly thought I was going to birth an alien from my neck lol

[turnforthenurse, MSN, NP]

Proper education is crucial. I find that surgeons are doing less education for surgical procedures nowadays. I had a patient undergoing an I&D procedure. The surgeon came by to take a look at the area, told the patient to plan on having surgery the next morning, gave me orders (changing the antibiotic dose/frequency, NPO after 0000, get a CT done and have the patient sign the informed consent) without even discussing the procedure to the patient. The surgeon was on his merry little way. Part of informed consent (which is the surgeon's job) is to explain all of the risks related to the procedure. I brought in the consent form and the patient was reading through it and after going through all of the risks listed, stated to me, "I'm not sure if I even want to have this procedure done now!" I offered to have the surgeon come back and talk to the patient but the patient declined and signed the form.

I also hate how surgeons/physicians expect a "simple" procedure to produce very little pain afterwards. I try to educate my patients on pain, rating pain and that there will be medications ordered to provide pain relief after the procedure to help ease their fears...

[turnforthenurse, MSN, NP]

It's always easier to control pain before they are fired up... stop the cascade before it starts... :-)

Absolutely! It is much easier to control pain when it is minimal instead of waiting until the patient is in agony and complaining of pain 10/10 - much harder to get under control when you wait.