Knowledge and practices of nurses regarding pain assessment in Intensive Care Units of tertiary care hospitals in Peshawar

Background: Pain is a significant problem experienced by patients, especially in the adult Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Inexorable pain is the most common condition among critical patients that may seriously affect their well-being, health outcomes, and quality of life. Objective: This study aimed to assess the nurses’ knowledge and practices related to pain assessment in critically ill patients. Methodology: A descriptive cross-sectional study was carried out among 58 registered nurses working at different ICUs in public and private hospitals. A non-probability purposive sampling technique was used, and frequency distribution and percentages were used for different variables. The data was collected through a modified adoptive questionnaire and the data was analyzed using SPSS 22.0 version and Microsoft excel 2010. Results: Among all participants, 23 (39.7%) participants were from public hospitals and 35 (60.3%) from private hospitals, 24 (41.4%) were male and 34 (59.6%) were female. The overall knowledge and practice of participants 6.90% had poor knowledge, 53.40% had good knowledge, 39.70%had a very good knowledge, 13.80% of participants had poor practice, 69.0% had a good practice and 17.20% had a very good practice. Conclusions: Nurses have a key role in the assessment and management of pain because pain is a nursing-sensitive indicator. Unfortunately, the treatment of pain is highly insufficient because of inadequate clinical knowledge about the best ways to manage pain; the current study findings reported that the nurses were having good knowledge about pain assessment. Most of the respondents had adequate knowledge about it and have good practice. And the majority of them were using pain assessment tools.