Pain Management, Ethical Responsibility, and Leadership in the Opioid Epidemic

Pain Management Ethical Responsibility and Leadership in the Opioid Epidemic
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Pain Management Ethical Responsibility and Leadership in the Opioid Epidemic
Introduction
Nurses have a responsibility to alleviate pain and improve patient's quality of life. Yet, they are often hindered by issues such as difficulties in assessing patients' pain levels, especially because some critically ill patients cannot verbally communicate their pain level (Rababa et al., 2021). Also, nurses and other healthcare providers sometimes underestimate the patient's pain level, leading to under-treatment (Paul-Savoie et al., 2018). As a result, nurses fail to enhance patients' quality of life with chronic pain by providing suboptimal treatment. The American Nurses Association (ANA) (2018) indicates that nurses must identify strategies to help them address the consequences of pain under-treatment. As a nurse, my role involves balancing the benefits of opioids in pain management and the risks of opioid misuse and addiction. To do so, I must incorporate evidence-based pain management interventions that can improve patient's quality of life without threatening their safety.
Pain Management Strategies
Effective pain management is highly dependent on effective pain assessment. Nurses must be familiar with the standard approaches in pain assessment for acute and chronic pain. According to Cooney and Quinlan-Colwell (2021), pain assessment involves clinical judgment to establish pain intensity, duration, causes, and experiences based on the healthcare professional observations and patient expression of pain. Nurses should question the patient about their pain experience and utilize pain assessment tools. In acute pain, assessment involves establishing the intensity of the pain (Cooney & Quinlan-Colwell, 2021). However, such an assessment fails to represent the full complexity of pain by not focusing on other dimensions of pain. In contrast, in chronic pain, the assessment is more comprehensive, addressing all the aspects of pain. Pain assessment scales are utilized for effective pain management. They include (1) verbal rating scales, which uses phrases to describe the level of pain, such as "no pain" to "severe pain," (2) numerical rating scales, which uses numbers to represent pain, such as from 0 to 10, and (3) visual analog scales, which assess pain levels against the most imaginable pain intensity (Benzon et al., 2017). Nurses must consider the context of the patient’s pain during pain assessment. For instance, cultural influences affect patients' pain responses and communication (Cooney & Quinlan-Colwell, 2021). Nurses must apply cultural sensitivity when assessing pain. After effective pain assessment, healthcare professionals can establish how to treat the pain. Often, pain treatment involves the use of pharmacological interventions such as analgesics, complementary therapies, and physical therapy (Cooney & Quinlan-Colwell, 2021).
The World Health Organization (WHO) also introduced the analgesic ladder to ensure cancer patients receive optimal pain relief. According to Anekar and Cascella (2022), the ladder proposes three steps f...