Pain Screening
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IT STARTS WITH SCREENING
So where do you start? With an initial pain screening, followed by a comprehensive assessment and appropriate treatment, and then regular reassessments and ongoing monitoring of all residents to detect any changes in status. In the next section, we present instructions and tools for accomplishing the first step: screening for the presence of chronic pain among nursing home residents.
Before you read on, however, consider these program prerequisites:
- First, enlist top-level support from a managerial "champion" to facilitate adoption of this new screening procedure by direct care staff. One way to recruit help: Hand the likely champion a printed copy of this module and ask if you two can discuss it after he/she has read it. Have you considered that you yourself might be the champion?
- Second, read through the module so that, from beginning to end, you know what's needed to improve pain management.
- Finally, allow extra time at the beginning to climb the learning curve; staff may need extra reinforcement at the start to establish a new pain screening routine.
That said, you should now read on:
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