assessingn pain in hospital in- patient: a cross-selectional study in Tuscany, Italy

Background: Guidelines Towards a Pain-Free Hospital, published in 2001 in Italy, determined an increasing spread of No-Pain Hospital Committees across the country and supported a more effective pain control in hospital. However few hospitals adopted such legislation rules. To date, a thorough investigation on quality of Pain Management Documentation is lacking. Objective: The present survey aimed to evaluate the quality of pain management documentation reported in medical and hospital discharge records. Design: The study reviewed records of 2459 patients discharged every Wednesday of November 2006 in 29 Tuscany hospitals. Results: Among 2459 patients, 51.5% were males. Patients were aged between 0-90 or more years and were mostly (24.93%) between 70 and 79 years old; most of them (47.1%) were hospitalized in Medicine wards. At hospital admission, less than half of examined records (40.3%) reported pain-related items, and only 8.1% reported how it was treated. During hospitalization, 39.6% of the records reported the use of scales for measuring pain intensity, and 49.7% reported the pharmacological therapy. Conclusions: The present study highlights the lack of an exhaustive documentation on pain recording and management in the hospital setting. Therefore, healthcare providers should pay close attention to this relevant issue, and the quality of such documentation should be constantly monitored.