District nurses’ documentation of patients with chronic pain conditions before and after the introduction of ‘pain advisers’

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to review the district nurses’ documentation of patients suffering from chronic pain conditions and to investigate whether the documentation changed after the introduction of specifically educated, district nurses (‘pain advisers’) at the primary health care centres (PHCC). A study area with five PHCCs and a control area with seven PHCCs were selected. One ‘pain adviser’ was introduced at each PHCC in the study area. The district nurses in the study area and the control area were asked to register all the patients older than 16 years with chronic pain conditions with whom they were in contact. The records of all the registered patients were collected in two periods (before and after the introduction of the pain advisers) and a review of different aspects of the nursing documentation related to chronic pain was performed. The nurses’ documentation regarding the patients’ chronic pain conditions was found to be incomplete and minimal. After the introduction of ‘pain advisers’ into the study area, some improvements were found in both areas. Our results indicate that the introduction of ‘pain advisers’ to some extent improved the documentation in the study area, but that further interventions are needed in order to improve it further.