Pain Assessment Using Numerical Rating Scale to Guide Analgesic Therapy in Post Operative Cardiac Surgery Patients

Pain assessment using Numerical Rating Scale to guide analgesic therapy in post operative cardiac surgery patients. Post operative pain assessment and management is a unique area of clinical practice. Repeated pain assessment is a fundamental tool for improving the quality of acute pain management. The objectives of the study were to assess pain using Numerical Rating Scale in post operative cardiac surgery patients before and after giving analgesics and to find out association between pain scale and selected variables.The study was conducted in the Cardiac surgical ICU of Sree Chitra Tirunal Institute for Medical Sciences and Technology, Trivandrum. Consecutive sampling technique was used for selecting the sample. The sample size was 30. Post operative cardiac surgery patients were the samples for the study. Total period of study was September 2007 to October 2007. A Numerical Rating Scale and selected questions to assess pain intensity and items to assess physiological changes were used as the tool for the study. The data was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. The study revealed that Numerical Rating Scale can be used as a reliable tool to assess post operative pain and pain intensity was reduced after giving analgesics and there was no significant difference between type of analgesics and reduction in pain score. The study also revealed that pain intensity was increased during coughing and position changing and there was no significant relationship between pain intensity and physiological changes. The studies using more number of samples may be useful to validate the findings. CONTENTS SL.NO Page Nos Chapter 1 1-1