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Solgård H1, Damsgård E1,2, Johannessen K1, Wennewold K1, Kvarstein G3, Pettersen G1, Garcia B4
1UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway, 2University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway, Department of Health and Care Sciences, Tromsø, Norway, 3UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Department of Clinical Medicine, Tromsø, Norway, 4UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Department of Pharmacy, Tromsø, Norway
Background: Health care staff caring for elderly nursing home residents experience several challenges related to the residents' poor health status. Chronic pain affects as many as 80% of elderly patients in long-term care. Furthermore, chronic pain among nursing home residents is associated with a reduced quality of life. Concurrent dementia may complicate pain management and increase the challenges for caregivers. A previous study indicated that nursing home residents with pain, especially those with dementia, often receive suboptimal treatment. The multidimensional nature of pain includes biological, psychological, and social aspects. Therefore, an interprofessional treatment approach to pain management is recommended. Accordingly, interprofessional teamwork is emphasized to prelicensed health care professionals as one of the core principles in pain assessment and management. IPE learning activities increase the students' knowledge of pain management, as well as their understanding of the benefits and necessity of working together. Despite a growing understanding of the necessity for pain education and interprofessional collaboration in pain management, IPE receives relatively minimal attention in undergraduate health care curricula. Currently, there are no common pain curricula across six different Norwegian health care professions.
Purpose: The present pilot project aimed to improve student comprehension of pain in elderly nursing home patients.We assembled interprofessional teams of IPE-naïve students from different health care professions in a real clinical setting and asked the teams to assess the pain levels of and provide a pain management plan for elderly patients with pain, based on their present knowledge. We wanted to explore their management strategies, thus facilitating further interprofessional student pain management activity development. The educational aims were to develop the students´ shared understanding of pain and pain management and to increase the mutual understanding of each profession´s contributions.
Methods: We formed two teams comprising one student from the nursing, physical therapy, pharmacy, and medical educations. Each team spent one day examining a patient with chronic pain at a nursing home and they developed pain management plans. We collected data through video recordings during teamwork before and after examining the patients and field notes during the patient examination. We analysed the video-recordings applying the seven-step model including
1) viewing the video data,
2) describing the video data,
3) identifying critical events,
4) transcribing,
5) coding,
6) constructing storyline and
7) composing a narrative. Field notes supplied the transcripts.
Results: Both teams succeeded in making a pain management plan for their patient. The common examination of the patient was crucial for the students' approaches to pain management and changed their pre-assumptions about the patients' pain. By sharing knowledge and reflecting together, the students reached a common consensus on suggestions for management of the patients' problems.
Conclusion(s): Interprofessional collaboration fostered enthusiasm and a more holistic pain management approach. However,students' lack of knowledge limited their understanding of pain.
Implications: A more holistic and multifaceted approach to pain management should be promoted among IPE-naïve students from many health care professions during their clinical practice. Learning from such an approach may be further facilitated by including an IPE component in the students' curricula.
Keywords: Education, IPE, pain management
Funding acknowledgements: UiT, the Arctic University of Tromsø, University Hospital of Northern Norway (UNN).
Purpose: The present pilot project aimed to improve student comprehension of pain in elderly nursing home patients.We assembled interprofessional teams of IPE-naïve students from different health care professions in a real clinical setting and asked the teams to assess the pain levels of and provide a pain management plan for elderly patients with pain, based on their present knowledge. We wanted to explore their management strategies, thus facilitating further interprofessional student pain management activity development. The educational aims were to develop the students´ shared understanding of pain and pain management and to increase the mutual understanding of each profession´s contributions.
Methods: We formed two teams comprising one student from the nursing, physical therapy, pharmacy, and medical educations. Each team spent one day examining a patient with chronic pain at a nursing home and they developed pain management plans. We collected data through video recordings during teamwork before and after examining the patients and field notes during the patient examination. We analysed the video-recordings applying the seven-step model including
1) viewing the video data,
2) describing the video data,
3) identifying critical events,
4) transcribing,
5) coding,
6) constructing storyline and
7) composing a narrative. Field notes supplied the transcripts.
Results: Both teams succeeded in making a pain management plan for their patient. The common examination of the patient was crucial for the students' approaches to pain management and changed their pre-assumptions about the patients' pain. By sharing knowledge and reflecting together, the students reached a common consensus on suggestions for management of the patients' problems.
Conclusion(s): Interprofessional collaboration fostered enthusiasm and a more holistic pain management approach. However,students' lack of knowledge limited their understanding of pain.
Implications: A more holistic and multifaceted approach to pain management should be promoted among IPE-naïve students from many health care professions during their clinical practice. Learning from such an approach may be further facilitated by including an IPE component in the students' curricula.
Keywords: Education, IPE, pain management
Funding acknowledgements: UiT, the Arctic University of Tromsø, University Hospital of Northern Norway (UNN).
Topic: Education; Education: methods of teaching & learning; Health promotion & wellbeing/healthy ageing
Ethics approval required: Yes
Institution: The Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD)
Ethics committee: not applicable
Ethics number: not applicable
All authors, affiliations and abstracts have been published as submitted.
