The effect of postoperative pain management program on improving nurses' knowledge and attitudes toward pain.

Effective postoperative pain treatment is an essential component to good quality of care. The purpose of this study was to explore nurses' knowledge of and attitudes toward pain in surgical wards before and after implementation of a postoperative management program at a university hospital in Jordan. The program consisted of an education program for nurses, and its effect was evaluated by using a pre- and post-intervention design. Sixty five registered nurses were asked to respond to a 21 items questionnaire, and a total of 240 patients' records were audited. After implementation of the program, the mean scores for all the questionnaire items were found to increase to 75%, with an average of 16/21 for the correct answers. There was a statistically significant difference (p < 0.05) between the number of correct answers between nurses' responses in the pre-intervention phase and their responses in the post-intervention phase for most of the questionnaire items. Also, there was a statistically significant improvement in the documentation of patients' care in 85% of the audited patients' records. It was recommended to introduce an acute pain services (APS) using a well established and safe pain management routines to increase the quality of care.