INQRI Team Offers New Tools to Measure Pain Management

Susan Beck and her colleagues at the University of Utah have published the first phase of their INQRI-sponsored work to develop tools to measure the quality of care related to pain management.

Dr. Beck: The purpose of this phase of our research was to establish content validity of the items and to evaluate whether patients understood each item and were able to make a judgment based on the care provided to them by nurses and their interdisciplinary team. We interviewed 39 hospitalized patients with pain at the end of a nursing care shift. The process allowed the team to produce a 44-item version of the tool that could then be tested in the clinical setting.

Copies of the final version of the tools that resulted from this ongoing work are available upon request. The first tool, "Pain Care Quality (PainCQ) Nursing" includes 14 items that measure three factors: Being Treated Right, Comprehensive Nursing Pain Care, and Efficacy of Pain Management. The second tool, "PainCQ-Interdisciplinary" contains six items that measure Partnership with the Healthcare Team and Comprehensive Interdisciplinary Pain Care. Please contact me at susan.beck@nurs.utah.edu to obtain a copy and request permission to use the PainCQ tools.

You can read the article in the March/April issue of Nursing Research, now available online.