Knowledge and practice of non-pharmacological pain management techniques among nurses and midwives in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital

Abstract

Background: Every year tens of millions of people around the world with life-threatening illnesses suffer unnecessarily from severe pain  and other debilitating symptoms due to their lack of access to proper pain assessment and management, non-pharmacological pain management technique can be very important in helping patients deal with their pain either acute or chronic one.

Aim: This study, therefore aimed to assess the knowledge and practice of nonpharmacological pain management techniques among  nurses and midwives in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital (AKTH), Kano Sate, Nigeria.

Methods and Materials: descriptive cross-sectional design was used for the study, the target population for the study was 503. Validated  self-administered questionnaire was used to collect the data from 104 nurses and midwives. The respondents were selected using a cluster and random sampling of all departments in Aminu Kano Teaching Hospital. Data was analyzed using descriptive and  inferential statistics.

Results: The results showed that 58.8% of the respondents had poor knowledge of nonpharmacological pain  management techniques, only 3.5% of them had very good knowledge. The study also revealed that most of the respondents 95.3% have  practiced at least one of the techniques, it was revealed that changing position was the most practiced technique by 71.8% of the  respondents. The study also showed that there was no significant relationship between knowledge and practice of the non- pharmacological techniques.

Conclusion: In Conclusion, knowledge of non-pharmacological pain management techniques was  discovered to be poor, and the practice was very good. To improve their knowledge and make them updated with proper non- pharmacological pain management, they should be encouraged and motivated to attend in-service trainings of up-to-date knowledge of  pain and pain management skills.