Methods for Nurses to Assess Pain in Patients with Psychiatric Disorders

Abstract

This study was performed to qualitatively and descriptively elucidate the method of pain assessment for patients with psychiatric disorders, and to obtain suggestions for the development of pain assessment methods. We selected nurses with clinical expertise and more than 5 years of experience from the network sampling and administered a semi-structured interview. Upon examination of the data obtained from the provided 29 categories, it was clarified how to assess pain in patients in a responsible and empathetic manner, as nurses of the psychiatry department, how to collect information from patients who had difficulty in expressing their pain, and how to determine the standpoint for the interpretation of information that was appropriate for the characteristics of individual patients with psychiatric disorders, and the causes of their pain. Based on these findings, it was suggested that the accuracy of pain assessment for patients with psychiatric disorders might be improved by understanding the attitudes necessary for pain assessment, learning a multifaceted method to collect information, and learning methods to improve the analytical ability for the causes and symptoms of pain.