29 May 2009

Health professionals caring for patients with acute postoperative pain can improve pain management with a new drug use evaluation toolkit developed by the National Prescribing Service Ltd (NPS).

The Acute postoperative pain drug use evaluation (DUE) toolkit can be used by hospitals to assess practices and ensure interventions lead to improvements in a patient’s experience of pain. It is designed to support surgical, anaesthetic, pharmacy and nursing staff in public and private hospitals to manage acute pain after surgery and assist hospitals to review practice when new drugs become available.

“Health professionals, hospital and day surgery services that choose to use these resources will be able to audit the quality of acute postoperative pain management by measuring key quality indicators, provide real-time reporting and feedback data in a format that supports educational quality improvement strategies,” Ms Mackson said.

The DUE toolkit was developed following a national quality improvement project on management of acute postoperative pain in 62 Australian public and private hospitals in 2006 and 2007 and includes an electronic DUE (e-DUE) data collection tool and educational resources.

The e-DUE data collection tool is a standalone windows application that provides a streamlined method of data entry and reporting of clinical measures that ensures both hospital and patient confidentiality. It measures 13 quality indicators including pain assessment, sedation scores and management of acute pain post-discharge.

The educational resources include:

• a PowerPoint feedback presentation for hospital staff
• wall posters on pain assessment and prescribing of analgesia
• pain scales, assessment and a discharge checklist
• a patient brochure
  
• a summary to be used in one-on-one education with clinical staff.

“The technology allows for improved functionality and can be used more than once to store data in order to show comparisons between data collections.” Ms Mackson said.

The educational resources in the toolkit were developed in consultation with the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists (ANZCA) and Faculty of Pain Medicine for the acute postoperative pain project.

The electronic DUE toolkit is free and can be downloaded from:

www.nps.org.au/health_professionals/drug_use_evaluation_due_programs/due_kit_for_hospitals

For more information contact NPS on (02) 8217 8700.

ENDS