Hindawi Publishing Corporation Pain Research and Treatment Volume 2011, Article ID 934932, 8 pages doi:10.1155/2011/934932
Research Article A Survey of Acute Pain Service Structure and Function in United States Hospitals Dawood Nasir,1 Jo E. Howard,2 Girish P. Joshi,1 and Gary E. Hill1 1
Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Management, The University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center, 5323 Harry Hines Boulevard, Dallas, TX 75390-9068, USA 2 Parkland Health and Hospital System, Dallas, TX 75235, USA Correspondence should be addressed to Gary E. Hill,
[email protected] Received 1 October 2010; Revised 5 January 2011; Accepted 7 February 2011 Academic Editor: Michael G. Irwin Copyright © 2011 Dawood Nasir et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Although the number of U.S. hospitals offering an acute pain service (APS) is increasing, the typical structure remains unknown. This survey was undertaken to describe the structure and function of the APS in U.S. hospitals only. We contacted 200 nonteaching and 101 teaching U.S. hospitals. The person in charge of postoperative pain management completed and returned the survey. Seventy-four percent of responding hospitals had an organized APS. An APS was significantly more formally organized in academic/teaching hospitals when compared to non-teaching hospitals. Pain assessments included “pain at rest” (97%), “pain on activity” (63%), and reassessment after pain therapy intervention (88.8%). Responding hospitals utilized postoperative pain protocols significantly more commonly in teaching hospitals when compared to non-teaching and VA hospitals. Intravenous patient controlled analgesia (IV-PCA) was managed most commonly by surgeons (75%), while epidural analgesia and peripheral nerve block infusions were exclusively managed by anesthesiologists. For improved analgesia, 62% allowed RNs to adjust the IVPCA settings within set parameters, 43% allowed RN adjustment of epidural infusion rates, and 21% allowed RN adjustment of peripheral nerve catheter local anesthetic infusion rates.
1. Introduction Despite of improved understanding of pain mechanisms and development of new analgesics techniques [1], undertreatment of postoperative pain continues [2]. It is suggested that availability of acute pain service (APS) would allow use of evidence-based approach to pain management and reduce the variations in pain management as well as provide wider choice of analgesic techniques and increase accountability [3, 4]. Overall, APS would improve postoperative pain management and patient satisfaction. Although the presence of an APS represents a step forward in postoperative pain control, its structure and functions across the United States remains unclear. In addition, the source of funding for APS, which is critical in the current economic environment of cost containment in healthcare, remains unknown. Furthermore, the involvement of nurses with pain management including pain assessment and implementation of analgesic protocols (i.e., clinical pathways) remains unknown [5–8].
This survey was designed to examine the structure and function of the APS in three different types of hospitals (e.g., academic, community based, and veterans administration (VA)) ranging in size from less than 200 beds to over 1000 beds across the US. In addition, we set out to determine the sources of funding for APS as well as evaluate delegated nursing responsibilities and management of commonly used postoperative analgesic techniques (i.e., intravenous patient-controlled analgesia (IV-PCA), epidural analgesia, and peripheral nerve catheter infusions).
2. Methods After approval by the institutional review board as an exempt research, a research assistant emailed a request to participate to 200 nonacademic hospitals selected from http://www.officialusa.com/stateguides/health/hospitals/index.html—a website listing of hospitals in the US. To be considered for this survey, the hospital web page must have
2
3.2. APS Demographics and Funding. The personnel comprising the typical APS included anesthesiologists (95%), advanced practice nurses (APN, 45%), registered nurses (RN, 32.5%), pharmacists (11.3%), physician assistants (8.8%), physical medicine and rehabilitation (PMR) physicians (6.3%), surgeons (5%), neurologists (3.8%), and others (oncologists, social workers, and psychologists) (Figure 2). Seventy percent reported that that APS existed separately from the chronic pain service. The 75% (60 of 81) of the organized APS was funded by the anesthesia department (significantly greater for academic (88%), when compared to
Acute pain service No acute pain service
Figure 1: Percentage of responding hospitals with an organized acute pain service (APS).
100 80 60 40
Neurologist
Surgeon
Physical medicine and rehabilitation
Physician’s assistant
Pharmacist
0
Registered nurse
20 Acute pain nurse
3.1. Hospital Demographics. A total of 108 questionnaires were returned out of 301 requests for participation, yielding an overall response rate of 35.9%. Of these responses, 55 hospitals were university-based medical centers, 40 were nonteaching (private) hospitals and 13 were VA hospitals. The geographic distribution across the US yielded 30 responses from the South, 18 responses from the West, 26 from the Midwest, 22 responses from the Northeast, and 12 unspecified. The size of the hospitals varied: 21 hospitals with fewer than 200 beds (19.4%), 49 with 200–500 beds (45.4%), 34 with 501–1000 beds (31.5%), and 4 with more than 1000 beds (3.7%). Eighty one hospitals had an organized APS (75%), and 27 did not (25%) (Figure 1). The likelihood of an APS was directly correlated to hospital size: hospitals with >1,000 beds (100%), 501–1000 beds (93.7%), 200–500 beds (79%), and
