The effectiveness of pain management methods used at kakamega county teaching & refferal hospital, Kenya

Abstract

Effective managing acute postoperative pain is a major challenge for practitioners, given that more than 80% of patients report pain after surgery, and 75% report the pain as moderate, severe, or even extreme .The American pain Society states that ‘In more than half of cases, patients report not receiving adequate pain management following their procedure’, which has raised concerns over the development of chronic pain. The objective of the study was to assess the effectiveness of pain management methods used at Kakamega County Teaching and Referral Hospital, Kenya (KCTRH). The study adopted a descriptive cross-sectional study which was carried out KCTRH. The participants in the study included all adult male and female patients who had undergone major surgical procedure within 24 hours post-operative.at KCTRH. The target population, (N) is 250. Purposive sampling method was used, meaning that only patients available during the data collection period and meets the inclusion criteria were included in the sample. Majority of the patients interviewed were aged between 31-40 years and most of the respondents were females accounting to 67(61%) of the respondents. All the respondents interviewed were Christians and worked in the informal sector. Most of the respondents 80(73%) reported that painkillers were given through intra-venous. 64(59%) of the respondents were given general anesthesia whereas 45(41%) were given regional block type of anesthesia.