Assessments of health professionals knowledge towards post-operative pain management in Asella Teaching and Referral Hospital, South East Ethiopia

Pain is defined as any an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage. Adequate postoperative pain management can reduce the patients‟ length of hospitalization and decrease postoperative complications. However, post-operative pain has not been satisfactorily relieved. Thus, the aim of this work is to assess professionals’ knowledge on post-operative pain management. Institutional based cross sectional study design was conducted. All health professionals who have worked in operation room, surgical ward, recovery room, and post anesthesia care unit were included. Data was entered into Epi info version 7 and transported to SPSS version 21 for analysis. Tables and narratives were used to determine descriptive statistics. A total of 52 participants were included in the study of which 59.6% were male. 69% of the respondents were found to be between the age of 20 and 23 years. Almost all patients in this study (94.23%) do not use pain assessment tools and 78.85% of the respondents do not know about multimodal analgesia. Approximately, one third of the respondents 32.69% mentioned that the drug is administered when the patient complain of pain. These showed that there is a knowledge gap on postoperative pain managements. Therefore, it was strongly recommended to improve professionals’ knowledge on postoperative pain management.   Key words: Pain, postoperative pain management, Asella Teaching Referral Hospital.