Up to the present day, pain management in the ICU (Intensive Care Units) is a unresolved clinical problem due to patient heterogeneity with complex variation in etiopathology and treatment of the underlying diseases. Therefore, therapeutic strategies in terms of standard operating procedure (SOP) are a necessary to improve the pain management for intensive care patients. Common guidelines for analgosedation are often inadequate to reflect the clinical situation. In particular, for an ICU setting without permanent presence of a physician a missing pain management SOP resulting in delayed pain therapy caused by a therapeutic uncertainty of the nurse staff. In addition to our pre-existing SOP for analgosedation we implemented a pain management SOP for our interdisciplinary, anaesthesiologic ICU. A exploratory survey among the nurse staff was conducted to assess the efficacy of the SOP. The results of the evaluation after a 6 month follow-up indicated a faster onset of pain management and good acceptance by the nursing staff.
© Georg Thieme Verlag Stuttgart · New York.