Pain management in nursing homes. Participation in a research project

Abstract

IntroducEon: Chronic pain prevalence among older adults living in a nursing home is 83- 93%. Many of them take analgesic medicaUon. Pharmacotherapy is the most common pain management strategy uUlized for older paUents. Aim: To analyze the associaUon between the experienced pain level and treatment received, and experienced pain level in relaUon to gender among older adults living in Catalan nursing homes. DescripUve analysis of pain treatments. Methodology: Cross-secUonal observaUonal study using Resicovid-19 project database. A total of 633 residents were analyzed. Independent variable of interest was pain, collected using the VAS scale. Age and gender were also independent variables collected. Dependent variable was analgesic prescripUon, and it was classified according to the WHO analgesic ladder. Results: The main pain treatments were those from the 1st ladder of the WHO analgesic scale (even for those residents experiencing high pain levels). There were no significant differences between experienced pain between genders (p=0.966). The most prescribed analgesic medicaUons were Paracetamol (64%), Metamizol (14%) and Tramadol (9%). Conclusions: Highest levels of experienced pain do not correlate with highest WHO analgesic ladder medicaUons. Analgesic medicaUon in the 1st ladder of the WHO analgesic scale were the most used in our sample. There were no significant differences between experienced pain among genders. The most used analgesic medicaUon was Paracetamol.