Bad pain management - difference in schooling?

[Purlple]

I'm only a student. Me and my classmates noted that older nurses are much less sensitive to their patients' pain as compare to the newer nurses. We think this is difference in the nursing schooling.

The professors drill in our heads in Nursing School to advocate for our patients to treat pain. We spent enourmous amount of hours only on pain assessment and management. What we see in practice, the older nurses ignore patients' pain complains as "He or she already got some" or "he is a drug addict" or "I just gave him". Well, it's obviously not working for him or her if it's 10/10 or 9/10.

I had to tell the relatives of the patient to ask Doc about a pain med when she or he have the opportunity. At the same time I felt awful advising them to talk to the Doc when they see him 'cause it't mean pt will suffer for few hours. The nurse in a meantime was complaining on her day and wining patients.

I wander if the nurses like that were the same all the time or the work in the hospital made them that way.

[fab4fan]

Believe it or not, it has only been recently that pain mgmt has become such a hot issue. It takes a long time for years of practicing a certain way to change. That's not to say that there is any excuse for nurses not to be informed about current standards of care; there's plenty of good information out there for nurses to use to update their skills/knowledge.

If you felt a pt was suffering needlessly d/t staff members not treating his pain adequately, you should have addressed this with your instructor. Pain left untreated has numerous deliterious effects on the body and can delay the pt's recuperation.

I can tell you that when I was a student we spent very little time discussing pain/pain mgmt., and we were taught many things that have now been proven to be incorrect. What I learned about pain mgmt. I got from studying on my own and from mentoring from nurses who specialized in pain mgmt.

Try to remember, too, that as a student you are not carrying the same load as a staff nurse, so while you may have the time to do in-depth pain assessments, etc., the staff nurse may be overwhelmed with many seriously ill patients. Again, that's not to say pts. should be allowed to suffer, but it may play a part in why a pt. in pain may not be cared for immediately.

I've seen "newer nurses" be just as lousy at assessing and treating pain, so please do not turn this into yet another thread about "older nurses."

[Tweety, BSN, RN]

I agree with Fab4fan and couldn't say it better.

Pain control and advocacy is a recent phenom. both in nursing and medicine. It's now considered a basic right to have one's pain controled, it's now the "5th" vital sign, it's now a big part of NCLEX and was a big part of my med-surg certification the second time I took the test.

So you are right, it might be a difference in how we are taught. The driving force of course has not been concern for the patient's pain, but lawsuits won on patient's behalf who needlessly suffered.

Kudos to you for being the advocate.

There are a lot of differences between old nurses and new nurses, some good and some bad. Hopefully the nurses old and new are becoming educated in how to assess and respond to pain appropriately. I work on a trauma floor and pain control is a big issue. Many a night I begin my shift on the phone with MDs for pain control issues that have gone unaddressed, but I haven't surveyed if it was older or new nurses. (But being med-surg trauma it tends to be on the newer side).