Providing comfort the focus of pain management
Monday November 5, 2007 -- Deron Hamel
Assessing pain in residents who are palliative can be a challenge in the long-term care sector. Coupled with this challenge are concerns about providing certain medications to relieve pain.

Many of these concerns about medications are unfounded, and the most important thing to remember is to keep residents comfortable and free of pain. This was the message at a recent pain management seminar held in Peterborough.

Vi O’Leary, life enrichment co-ordinator at Frost Manor in Lindsay, says she found the Oct. 26 seminar, which was part of a Four Counties Long-Term Care Palliative Network meeting, to be informative.            

One important message O’Leary says she walked away with was the importance of doing pain assessments on residents.

Residents who are palliative are often confused and health-care professionals need to ensure that pain is not adding to their confusion, says O’Leary.

Communication, she says, is the key to effective pain assessment.

“Talk to them, try to communicate with them in some way to find out if they are in pain,” says O’Leary.

O’Leary says Dr. Sol Stern, a noted palliative care expert who spoke at the seminar, eased a lot of concerns long-term care staff members had about administrating pain medication to residents.

For example, O’Leary says she learned that when a person receiving palliative care is on medication requiring doses every four hours, health-care practitioners might be reluctant to administer the medication in shorter intervals. This reluctance, she says, often comes from a fear of the person becoming addicted.

O’Leary says she learned that health-care professionals shouldn’t be wary of administrating the doses sooner. Giving a person who is palliative pain medication at earlier intervals, Stern told the audience, provides the individual with continuous comfort.

“You’re looking at comfort,” says O’Leary. “Your objective should be to keep the people comfortable.”

Stern, who serves as chairman of palliative care at Halton Healthcare Services, delivered his presentation just before the start of National Pain Awareness Week, which runs Nov. 4-10.

Following his presentation, he told the Morning Report the message he was trying to get out.

“What we’re trying to do is raise the profile of pain management in Canada,” he said.

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