Outpatient Surgery Magazine

The New Quality Standards - January 2013

Outpatient Surgery Magazine, providing current information on Surgical Services, Surgical Facility Administration, Outpatient Surgery News and Trends, OR Excellence and more.

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6TH VITAL SIGN Inadequate post-operative pain control has adverse physiologic effects, and will soon have an adverse effect on your bottom line. G. Stanfield, CRNA, PhD, a pain management specialist at the Skiff Medical Center in Newton, Iowa, has 3 words for you: proactive, preemptive and multifactorial. • Proactive. Rather than react to a bad situation and attempt to rescue a patient who's writhing in pain in PACU, develop and implement a pain management plan before taking care of the patient, says Dr. Stanfield. There's also a psychological component to pain management: "Prepare the patient for the amount of discomfort associated with the procedure he's undergoing. The patient needs to know what to expect. His psychological state contributes greatly to his experience of pain." How Well Do You Manage Post-Op Pain? Letting pain get the upper hand is a sure way to sink your patient satisfaction scores. Dan O'Connor | Editor-in-Chief • Preemptive. "Letting a patient experience pain is far less efficacious than preventing pain," says Dr. Stanfield. "Being rescued from pain is far less impressive than not having it in the first place. It's a much lower quality patient experience." • Multifactorial. There are many discreet causes of pain, no 2 of which admit of the same treatment — meaning that 1 inter- L ooking to better manage post-oper- vention won't treat them all. Dr. Stanfield's ative pain and boost your facility's advice: Take advantage of today's many patient satisfaction scores? Louis drugs and pain management techniques. J A N U A R Y 2013 | S U P P L E M E N T TO O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E 2 9

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