International Journal of Anesthesiology & Pain Medicine

Acute pain service in a hospital environment: a real need or a real luxury?!

Joint Event on 7^th Edition of International Conference on Internal Medicine and Patient Care & 6^th Edition of International Conference on Pain Management
March 26-28, 2018 Vienna, Austria

Gabriel M Gurman

The National Institute for Biotechnology, Israel

Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Int J Anesth Pain Med

DOI: 10.21767/2471-982X-C1-003

Abstract

The idea of organizing an acute pain service in every hospital is not new. It started in the USA in 1988 and very soon it became an important task for a lot of hospitals in both North American and Europe continents. Today we know that the creation of an acute pain service in every hospital would have a large series of advantages. It would improve patient comfort, would reduce the duration of hospitalization, decrease the rate of pulmonary and other complications, such as nausea and vomits, as well as incidence of urinary retention. The ideology behind the creation of an APS (American Pain Society) includes: 1. a goal: to provide optimal analgesia to each and single patient in acute pain. 2. a way: creation of a team of dedicated individuals which would fulfill the above goal. 3. a continuous education plan, for each nurse and physician, in every single department of each hospital. There are seven recommended steps in the way of creating an APS: Step 1: recognition of the APS importance by all factors. Step 2: the respect of the 24-hrs a day principle. Step 3: create the multidisciplinary team (the APS committee). Step 4: finding the necessary financial resources. Step 5: defining the maximum acceptable pain score. Step 6: accepting the principle of continuous treatment and refusing the idea of â�?�?sawâ�? management. Step 7: creating an education system for personnel. The main obstacles in the way of creating an APS are those related to logistics, education and cost. But joined efforts from all the interested persons and departments could overcome these difficulties. Some evident lessons are to be taken home which are as follows: pain is dangerous also because its psychological and physiological negative effects; cooperation is too important to be underestimated; clinical and instrumental monitoring is the key for success; patient satisfaction is important for the medical institution name and fame and a well built up APS could solve most of the problems and avoid most of the dangers. guman@bgu.ac.il