Pain, major complaint in hospitals —Expert

A medical expert, Dr Olufemi Afolabi, had said that of every 10 persons that come to the hospital, at least seven will complain of pain. Dr Afolabi, who spoke at the pain management training for student nurses from the School of Nursing at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, said discomfort at any part of the body should not be overlooked, but scored and treated.

He said 1402 cadres of the staff had been trained on achieving a pain–free hospital in one year since the hospital was selected for a pilot scheme on pain-free hospital initiative.

The trainings, which were to motivate clinicians to evaluate and treat ache, were also to ensure that hospital staffes are engaged to create awareness about pain.

Noting that ache is now a vital sign that the hospital measures in every patient, Dr Afolabi declared that the hospital’s pain score between July and August, 2016 indicated highest ache score in labour ward and the least in the hospital’s medical wards.

In addition, he said that between August 2015 and September, 2016, the hospital had dispensed 1.2 million milligrammes of morphine to treat ache, aside other pain killers.

Although the target was to increase by 50 per cent the use of narcotics in pain management, he said challenges to this had included myths and misconception on narcotic use for pain treatment, limited access to narcotics, weak procurement system, as well as disproportional concern about diversion, addiction and abuse of narcotics.

“Discomfort is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that is associated with actual or potential tissue damage. It is a subjective experience and as such any discomfort anywhere in the body should be considered.

“Almost all patients have ache, in fact 80 per cent that have advanced cancer and 50 per cent of people with advanced HIV experience moderate to severe pain.

“Opioid analgesics are considered essential medicines by World Health Organisation (WHO), but it is limited in low and middle-income countries where 85 per cent of the people that need it live.

“Nigeria is high in the number of people that die with untreated discomforts; more than 10,000 people die with discomforts in Nigeria because there is no money or morphine to treat their discomforts.

“This is something that we must address to ensure people’s discomforts are assessed and treated.

“Opioids are the foundation of pain management for moderate and severe discomforts. It is safe and effective if it is used according to prescription.

“Pain treatment improves compliance to curative treatment, extends survival, improves quality of life as well as reduces unnecessary prolonged admission for patients.