This guideline provides recommendations for nurses who are assessing and managing people with the presence, or risk of, any type of pain. It is important that nurses, in collaborating with their interprofessional team, know and work with people, their families and caregivers to promote safe and effective strategies for assessing, managing and preventing pain. Effective prevention and management of pain depends on coordinated interprofessional care that emphasizes ongoing communication among professionals and the people seeking their services.
This guideline provides recommendations for nurses who are assessing and managing people with the presence, or risk of, any type of pain. It is important that nurses, in collaborating with their interprofessional team, know and work with people, their families and caregivers to promote safe and effective strategies for assessing, managing and preventing pain. Effective prevention and management of pain depends on coordinated interprofessional care that emphasizes ongoing communication among professionals and the people seeking their services.
As an introduction, we’ve provided summaries of the practice recommendations from the BPG document — but we strongly encourage downloading RNAO’s official PDF.
Screen for the presence, or risk of, any type of pain:
Perform a comprehensive pain assessment on persons screened having the presence, or risk of, any type of pain using a systematic approach and appropriate, validated tools.
Perform a comprehensive pain assessment on persons unable to self-report using a validated tool.
Explore the person’s beliefs, knowledge and level of understanding about pain and pain management.
Document the person’s pain characteristics.
Collaborate with the person to identify their goals for pain management and suitable strategies to ensure a comprehensive approach to the plan of care.
Establish a comprehensive plan of care that incorporates the goals of the person and the interprofessional team and addresses:
Implement the pain management plan using principles that maximize efficacy and minimize the adverse effects of pharmacological interventions including:
Evaluate any non-pharmacological (physical and psychological) interventions for effectiveness and the potential for interactions with pharmacological interventions.
Teach the person, their family and caregivers about the pain management strategies in their plan of care and address known concerns and misbeliefs.
Reassess the person’s response to the pain management interventions consistently using the same re-evaluation tool. The frequency of reassessments will be determined by:
Communicate and document the person’s responses to the pain management plan.
This website was developed by a team of researchers at the Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing at Toronto Metropolitan University (Formerly Ryerson University). The purpose of the site is to provide supplementary resources for implementing RNAO’s Best Practice Guidelines. Some information about the best practice guidelines has been collected directly from the RNAO BPG website. We have done our best to ensure accuracy, however some discrepancies may occur. For official, up-to-date information about the best practice guidelines, please refer to the RNAO website.
