The effects of an education video on patients' requests for postoperative pain relief.

A patient education videotape called if it hurts, tell us was used to provide one of three groups of 20 preoperative patients with information about pain control and to encourage them to be assertive in their requests for postoperative pain relief. There were no significant differences in the levels of pain or requests for analgesia between the group which had been specifically encouraged by the education video to seek pain relief and the groups which had not seen the video. Patients in all three groups generally experienced a good deal of pain following surgery, but they were not dissatisfied with this experience and did not take available action to eliminate all their pain. While the literature suggests that improvements in postoperative pain management might be achieved by better staff education, patients' reluctance to eliminate their pain should also be considered.