Health Care : Current Reviews

Usage of non-pharmacologic methods on postoperative pain management by nurses: sample of Turkey

18^th World Congress on Clinical Nursing & Practice

September 21-22, 2018|Prague, Czech Republic

Zuleyha Simsek Yaban

Kocaeli University, Turkey

Scientific Tracks Abstracts: Health Care Current Reviews

Abstract:

At the postoperative period, pain one of the most important patients complains. An acute pain starting with surgical trauma, lessening gradually and ending by the tissue recovery. The essential aim in nursing care of postoperative pain is to do patient assessment with nursing approaches. Furthermore, pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic nursing interventions that included individual plan are to implementation and evaluation. The purpose of this literature review, which non-pharmacological methods can be used by nurses to cope with post-operative pain in Turkey. In postoperative pain control, nonpharmacologic pain control methods can be used to increase the effect of analgesics, in case of insufficient effect of analgesics, or when analgesics cannot be used. Among nonpharmacologic postoperative pain control methods, transcutaneous nerve stimulation, application of hot and/or cold compresses, relaxation exercises, music therapy, massage, reflexology, aromatherapy are rarely used in postoperative pain control, but hypnosis, reiki, yoga and acupuncture cannot be implemented by nurses in Turkey. Non-pharmacologic methods can be done by doctors and dentists with application certificate and nurses can only help them within ???The Regulation of Traditional and Complementary Medical Applications??? October 10, in 2014. On the other hand, nurses can perform only hot and/ or cold compresses, massage, therapy with music, play and art, acupressure, therapeutic touch, imagery, draw attention away and relaxation techniques independently as stated in the ???Nursing Regulation??? published on April 19, 2011. It may be said that the concept of pain is one of the most important nursing research interests in recent years and the use of complementary and alternative methods to reduce pain has attracted nurses in our country to conduct postgraduate research thereby giving importance to complementary and alternative therapies. It is seen that majority of the studies conducted on nonpharmacologic methods in Turkey were Master???s or Doctoral theses. These methods cannot be performed by nurses working at the hospitals in Turkey. The reasons that non-pharmacological methods were practiced less frequently by nurses were insufficient number of nurses, patients??? reluctance about pain control, lack of time, and lack of information about pain control. In accordance with these results, it is recommended to give more space for teaching the non-pharmacological methods that can be applied for pain management and legal regulations can be improved.

Biography :

Zuleyha Simsek Yaban is an Assistant Professor at Kocaeli University Faculty of Health Sciences and the Director of Surgical Nursing Program. She has received her Master's degree (2006) and PhD (2015) from the Department of Surgical Nursing in Kocaeli University, Turkey. She has been working as an Educator for 13 years. Her research interests include complementary/alternative/integrative medicine, oncology, breast cancer, postoperative urinary retention, orthopedic, nursing care, nursing diagnosis and wound care.

E-mail: zuleyha_simsek@kocaeli.edu.tr