Examination of knowledge about and nursing interventions for the care of patients in pain of nurses who work at Cukurova University medical faculty Balcali hospital.

Pain is a concept that goes back into distant history and is something that is faced by every person in different degrees and at different times in their lives. A definition of pain, adopted by the International Association for the Study of Pain and the American Pain Society, is: "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage." Although pain is one of the most common reasons for needing health care, it is not well understood and continues to be one of the most important health problems today. The pain experience is dynamic, and the nurse is responsible for understanding this. Nurses need to cooperate with the patient and other members of the health care team to be able to control pain. Nurses are ethically responsible for the management and easing of pain. This study was conducted to investigate what nurses know about the care of patients in pain and what nursing actions are used. There were 198 nurses working day shift at Cukurova University Balcali Hospital who were included. The data were collected using a questionnaire that described the nurses and measured the nurses' knowledge about care. The mean age of the nurses was 30.89 years, they had a mean 12.0 years of experience in the profession, 52.0% did not have experience with chronic pain, 42.4% stated that they frequently encountered patients in pain, 70.2% had received education about pain in school, 88.4% had not received education about pain outside of school and did not read about pain in journals, 88.9% used pharmacologic management, 85.4% evaluated patients' pain based on verbal statements, 96.5% knew the important points in the use of opioid analgesics, and 3% knew pain theory. As a result of this study, it is seen that nurses have inadequate knowledge about care of patients in pain and pain control methods. After evaluation of the conclusions, they will be used in education to increase the quality of the nursing care.