pain protocols

[BurnerKG]

if you work at a hospital or know of a hospital with a triage pain protocol, please message back the name/city/state of the hospital. i'm on a joint commision committeefor my hospital and the director wants to start a triage policy for pain treatment. they are looking at doing tylenol for mild pain, motrin for mod pain, and vicodin or percocet for sever pain. i have issues with this but i need to get info from other hospitals and no other in the area has a policy addressing this. any and all help is greatly appreciated.

[TazziRN, RN]

Wow....glad I don't work at your facility. I would not be comfortable treating pain at triage.

[traumaRUs, MSN, APRN]

If you do a search - there was a fairly extensive thread on this subject recently.

However, I work in a level one trauma center in the midwest. We treat pain at triage with tylenol/motrin and that is it. If the pain is severe, they need to be seen by a provider. We do not provide narcotics at triage because of the inherent responsibilities associated with the medical screening exam.

[KatieBell]

I recently did a travel contract where they had standing orders for tylenol, motrin, vicoden and MORPHINE sq (up to 4 mg!) in triage or when the patient got to the room. Funny thing though, was that they also had a no waiting policy. They have no other protocols, though because they have residents and feel that the residents are always Johnny on the spot. In reality the bloods sit around the room until the resident gets time to order some labs up etc...

It was a really odd system....

I never actually used the pain protocol, just felt too uncomfortable as a traveler to do that...

[BurnerKG]

thanks for the replies and i am aware of the prior thread, but if possible, i need the name of the hospital and location so that i can call and talk to the ED director for some information. the prior thread did not include this info as far as i saw.