Pain Management Decision Making Among Long-Term Care Physicians

Discussion
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Overview of the Article/ Study- Pain Management Decision Making Among Long-Term Care Physicians and Nurses
The article under discussion sorts to examine and explore the attitudes and beliefs that surround long-term care physicians in the prescription and administration of pain medications. Long-term care (LTC) facilities comprise of assisted living institutions and nursing homes that provide residential care to not only the elderly but also those individuals living with disability. Although some of the residents in LTCs are healthy and only require assistance because of their age, majority in these facilities are plagued by various medical conditions including cognitive impairment that warrant them to take strong pain medications and drugs (Kaasalainen et al., 2007). According to the article “These older adults are particularly vulnerable to unrelieved pain because of declining verbal ability coupled with erroneous beliefs among their health care providers about pain” (Kaasalainen et al., 2007). Despite these revelations, pain management in LTCs is quite wanting primarily because of the misconceptions held by the professional care providers. For instance, some of these care givers believe that pain is part of the aging process and that patients with dementia are incapable of feeling pain. Similarly, there are those who fear that the side effects of opioids will be too strong to older patients. Other themes decision points that formed part of the study include uncertainty of accuracy of pain assessments and trust between attending nurses and physicians (Kaasalainen et al., 2007). These misconceptions, decision points and attitudes have contributed significantly to inadequate pain assessment and management among LTC patients with cognitive impairments.
Analysis of the Sampling Method
Theoretical sampling technique was used to answer the stip...