The effectiveness of Behavioral Pain Scale in the assessment of pain in patients with low level of consciousness

Pain diagnosis is a frustrating effort especially due to the barriers in communication with patients in low level of consciousness; therefore this study, aimed at the evaluation of utilizing BPS by nurses for patients who are unable to express their pain because of their low level of consciousness, has been designed. This research is a semi-empirical study on sixty eight nurses chosen with a census method from the staff of ICU in selected hospitals of Hamadan University of Medical Sciences. The subjects’ abilities in diagnosis and determining the intensity of pain have been measured in three phases of resting, changing position and secretion suction in ICU patients before and after utilizing behavioral pain scale (BPS) In Resting phase %25.5 in BPS pre-training, %56 in BPS post training, in changing position phase %58 in BPS pre-training,%76 in post training, and in secretion suction phase %60 in BPS pre-training and %80 in BPS post training of the nurses were able to determine the pain intensity. After being trained, also the number of the nurses who reported the intensity of pain in the mentioned phases was increased compared to BPS pre-training. (P<0.05) The results of this study in utilizing BPS indicate that this scale has been effective in diagnosing and monitoring pain in patients with low levels of consciousness Therefore teaching and utilizing this kind of scale can be effective to raise the quality of medical treatment and pain management in ICU.