The researchers used PAIN OUT, an EU-funded, international acute pain registry and research project that collects patient-reported outcome data on day one after surgery.
The analysis showed three aspects to be most important for patient satisfaction: pain experience, patient involvement and characteristics of the patient-caregiver relationship (eg provision of adequate information on pain treatment options).
Project lead, Dr Matthias Schwenkglenks, comments: “We were the first research group that was able to study this topic at such a large scale, a unique opportunity. It was striking to us how consistent our results were across healthcare centers and countries.”
Overall, the findings indicate that satisfaction with postoperative pain treatment is less associated with the patients’ actual pain experience but rather with impressions of improvement and appropriateness of care.
Above all, seems to be the involvement of patients in decisions about their treatment is of great importance.
For further information, access the press release from University of Basel or the journal article ‘Correlates of satisfaction with pain treatment in the acute postoperative period: results from the international PAIN OUT registry‘ on the PAIN journal website.
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