Pain status of the surgical patients before and after prescribing analgesia

The aim of this study was to assess the pain status of surgical patients before and after prescribing analgesia. In this quasi exprimental study, 206 patients with acute postoperative pain were selected from surgical wards of two teaching hospitals in Ahvaz by convenience sampling method. They were asked to rate their pain intensity by the numeric rating scale (NRS) and the verbal rating scale (VRS) immediately before and 1 hour after receiving the analgesia. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics, Chi-square test and paired T-test. On a NRS, 93% of the patients had severe and extreme pain during the first 24 hours of the surgery and before receiving analgesia, whereas 86% had mild pain during the third day after surgery and receiving analgesia. The mean pain intensity decreased from 4.69 on the first day to 0.87 on the third day after surgery that shows the effect of analgesia and timely prescription by nurses (P<0/ 001). In this study, a positive association was seen between the use of both verbal and numerical scales for assessing the pain and adequate pain relief after analgesia prescription.