PHARMACOLOGY 676 Week 7 Discussion

PHARMACOLOGY 676 Week 7 Discussion

Effective pain management is important in nursing practice, as it affects patient experiences with the care process. Nurses and other healthcare providers play crucial roles in ensuring the adoption of pain management interventions that would result in optimal outcomes. Pain assessment is subjective, which may affect the effectiveness of the adopted interventions. Therefore, nurses should be aware of the multiple pain assessment and management interventions to enable them to address the actual needs of their patients. Consequently, this paper explores my experience with Pathways to Safer Opioid Use interactive exercise.

The Pathways to Safer Opioid Use interactive exercise had a positive effect on my attitude towards prescribing pain medications. The exercise raised my awareness about the importance of adopting best practice recommendations to ensure optimal pain management. The exercise also made me understand the importance of weighing the benefits versus risks of pain management medications in the patient care process. The adopted pain management medications should minimize the risk of harm, including drug dependence by the patients. I also deepened my awareness of the importance of ensuring that patients and their significant others understand the need and use of pain medications. Health literacy promotes treatment adherence and safe use of pain medications (Bonkowski et al., 2018). The interactive exercise also strengthened my positive attitude towards interprofessional collaboration in pain management using opioids. Healthcare providers should collaborate in assessing, planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating the adopted pain management interventions.

My experience with pain management in the past is that healthcare providers utilize teamwork. Nurses and other healthcare providers collaborate in exploring the most effective pain management interventions to promote patients’ positive experiences with the care process. I have also witnessed the use of pain assessment tools to rate pain that patients experience and determine the best dosage of opioid medications. My philosophy towards pain management is that nurses should manage pain based on the patient’s experience and not nurses’ objective assessment. Patients understand their pain experiences better than nurses do (Pölkki et al., 2018). As a result, the approach to pain management should be patient-centered rather than provide-focused.

One of the steps that I can take to monitor a patient’s prescription drug use is by assessing their understanding of drug use. Nurses should educate patients about the use of prescribed drugs and assess their level of understanding. A low level of understanding will affect the use of prescribed medications. The other way is to determine the patient’s experiences with the prescribed medications. A focus should be placed on determining if the patient developed any side and adverse effects associated with the medications (Smeland et al., 2018). Adverse effects may arise due to inappropriate medication use by the patient.

Health literacy affects pain management. Patients with a high level of understanding about pain management are likely to have positive experiences with pain management. Their level of understanding influences their ability to explore additional interventions for optimum pain management. An example is the adoption of non-pharmacological interventions to enhance pain management. Health literacy also influences safety in medication use. Informed patients promote safety in pain management by eliminating factors that predispose them to ineffective medication use (Alotaibi et al., 2018). Therefore, health literacy is important in pain management.

In summary, the Pathways to Safer Opioid Use interactive exercise influenced positively my attitude towards prescribing pain medications. My experiences with pain management promote the utilization of best practice interventions. My philosophy towards pain management focuses on patient-centeredness. Health literacy should be promoted to ensure optimum pain management in nursing practice.

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References

Alotaibi, K., Higgins, I., Day, J., & Chan, S. (2018). Paediatric pain management: Knowledge, attitudes, barriers and facilitators among nurses – integrative review. International Nursing Review, 65(4), 524–533. https://doi.org/10.1111/inr.12465

Bonkowski, S. L., Gagne, J. C. D., Cade, M. B., & Bulla, S. A. (2018). Evaluation of a Pain Management Education Program and Operational Guideline on Nursing Practice, Attitudes, and Pain Management. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 49(4), 178–185. https://doi.org/10.3928/00220124-20180320-08

Pölkki, T., Korhonen, A., & Laukkala, H. (2018). Nurses’ perceptions of pain assessment and management practices in neonates: A cross-sectional survey. Scandinavian Journal of Caring Sciences, 32(2), 725–733. https://doi.org/10.1111/scs.12503

Smeland, A. H., Twycross, A., Lundeberg, S., & Rustøen, T. (2018). Nurses’ Knowledge, Attitudes and Clinical Practice in Pediatric Postoperative Pain Management. Pain Management Nursing, 19(6), 585–598. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pmn.2018.04.006

 

Week 7 Discussion Forum 1
Reflect on your experience with the Pathways to Safer Opioid Use interactive exercise. How did this exercise affect your attitude toward prescribing pain medications? What has been your experience with pain management in the past? What is your philosophy toward pain management as a prescriber? Explain.

a. What steps can you take to monitor a patient’s prescription drug use?
b. What impact can health literacy have on pain management?
Addition information for paper
Click the link below to begin the interactive video exercise. After watching the introduction, choose the character of Dr. Martin Bright, the Primary Care Physician. You will follow Dr. Bright through the scenario and make decisions related to preventing opioid-related adverse drug events (ADEs).
Pathways to Safer Opioid Use is an immersive, interactive training tool that was designed using the opioid-related recommendations outlined in the National Action Plan for Adverse Drug Event Prevention (ADE Action Plan) (Links to an external site.). This training uses the principles of health literacy and a multimodal, team-based approach to promote the appropriate, safe, and effective use of opioids to manage chronic pain.