Comparison of Nurses’ and Patients’ Assessments of Postoperative Pain

Background: Congruence between the patient’ self-reported pain and nurse pain evaluation is an important tool to uncover bias moderators in pain assessment. Aim: This study was carried out to investigate the congruence between patient self-reported pain and nurses’ evaluation in postoperative period. Methodology: Thirty six nurses (36) and one hundred forty-five (145) patients who these nurses are responsible for taking care in general surgery, gynecology and cardiovascular surgery clinics of Giresun Ada Hospital were enrolled in this descriptive and comparative study. The sample consisted of patients who were within the first 48 hours postoperatively and received general anesthesia. EQ-5D pain questionnaire and numerical rating scale were used to assess pain in the postoperative period during data collection. Results: The correlation of nurses’ and patients’ EQ-5D questionnaire was found to be statistically significant (p=0.03), although there was no congruence between nurses’ and patients’ NRS (p=0.18). It was determined that the mean score of patients’ NRS was higher than the mean score of nurses’. Conclusion: According to these findings, the congruence between the patients’ self-reported pain and nurse evaluation was statistically significant in postoperative pain assessment with EQ-5D questionnaire. These results are sufficiently robust to warrant further prospective and multicentre studies to verify the generalization of these findings.