THE EFFECT OF PAIN MANAGEMENT TRAINING IN BOTH SPEECH AND ELECTRONIC METHODS ON NURSES' PERFORMANCE: A RANDOMIZED CONTROLLED TRIAL

Pain management is a complex process realized through teamwork and
interdisciplinary collaboration. Nurses, as the people who spend the most time with the patient, play an
important role in controlling their pain; this requires knowledge, skill and deep understanding of the
multiple dimensions of pain management. Choosing the appropriate educational method is one of the
most important stages in the design of education. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect
of pain management training in both lecture and electronic methods on nurses' performance in surgical
wards.
Materials & Methods: This study was a randomized controlled trial that was performed on 78 nurses
working in surgical wards of Tabriz educational centers. The samples were selected through
convenience sampling. Then, the samples were randomly divided into two groups (one group receiving
lectures and one group receiving electronic training) by random blocking with blocks 4 and 6. In order
to hide the allocation, a blank opaque packet of 1 to 78 containing the type of intervention was used.
The intervention consisted of four sessions of one-hour training for both groups. Their information was
collected in two steps before and two weeks after training using demographic information questionnaire
and nurses' checklist. Data analysis was done using SPSS version 24 using descriptive and analytical
statistics including Factor, Fisher, T-test, and ANCOVA. The p-value less than 0.05 was considered
significant.
Results: The two groups were similar in terms of socio-demographic characteristics (p <0.05). Themean
score of nurses' performance scores in intervention group with baseline control after intervention
increased compared to control group (Adjusted Mean Difference (MD) = 3.2: 95% CI = 2.7 to 3.6,
p<0.001). Also, after educational intervention, in the e-learning group, the use of opioid and non-
narcotic drugs based on prescribing physician (p = 0.47), the use of non-pharmacological pain control
(p = 0.006), and the relationship of nurses with the patient (0.001> p) was more than the lecture group.
Conclusion: E-learning is more effective than lectures in increasing nurses' performance in relation to
pain management. Therefore, this method is recommended for effective education and policymaking to
assess and measure pain by nurses