CE: Overcoming Movement-Evoked Pain to Facilitate Postoperative Recovery.

Severe postoperative movement-evoked pain (MEP) can be immobilizing, instilling in patients the fear that further activity will produce unbearable pain. This impedes healing and restoration of function while also extending time to recovery. Therefore, it is critical to manage MEP effectively through timely evaluation and comprehensive care planning.

CE: Assessing Movement-Evoked Pain.

One of the most common and nuanced tasks that nurses perform is pain assessment, particularly in acute postoperative settings where frequent reassessments are needed. Most assessments are limited to obtaining a pain intensity score with little attention paid to the conditions necessitating the assessment or the factors contributing to the pain. Pain is frequently assessed during rest, but seldom during periods of movement or activity, which is a crucial omission given that acute postoperative movement-evoked pain (MEP) is intense and a common barrier to healing and restoration of function.

[Pain registration: for the benefit of the inspectorate or the patient?].

Increasing attention is currently being directed to the measurement and treatment of pain. A recent study concluded that the implementation of a patient safety programme was successful because 99% of the hospitals indicated that they measure postoperative pain. However, another recent study, evaluating this safety programme, concluded that hospitals could improve the implementation of pain measurements, as only 56% of the postoperative patients were subject to standardized pain measurements during the first 3 days following surgery.

['Postoperative pain treatment' practice guideline revised].

On the initiative of the Dutch Association of Anaesthesiologists, a multidisciplinary workgroup has revised the 2003 practice guideline on 'Postoperative pain treatment' for adults and children. The main reason for revision was the availability of new drugs and new methods of administration. The most important deviations from the previous edition are the following.