Determination of the congruence between nurses and patients' pain assessment and nurses' pain beliefs

Pain, which is one of the most common problems in the case of trauma, directly affects the clinical outcome of the patients, therefore it is very important for the healthcare professionals to correctly determine the pain severity and avoid attitudes towards pain. This descriptive study aims to determine the congruence between nurses and patients' pain assessment and nurses' pain beliefs. The sample of the study consists of 150 patients who came to the General Surgery clinic of a state hospital due to trauma. Introductory Information Form, Pain Beliefs Scale (PBS), and Pain Follow-up Form were used in data collection. Descriptive statistics, t test, ANOVA, Paired Sample t test, Pearson Correlation test and Intra-Class Correlation Coefficient tests were used to evaluate the data. The mean age of the nurses is 27.69 ± 2.78, 69.23% of them are female, 84.61% of them have bachelor's degrees. The mean age of the patients was 34.84 ± 13.95, 54.67% were male, 28.67% were only literate. It has been found that the patients had moderate pain, the most intense pain was reported on the 1st day, the intensity of pain has decreased after the 1st day, and there is a relationship between the education level of the nurses and patients and the pain intensity score. It was found that the congruence between patient and nurse pain assessments was high, but the pain scores reported by the patients were higher than the nurses did. It was determined that the mean score of nurses Organic Beliefs (PBS-O) was 3.17±1.05, and that the mean score of Psychological Beliefs (PBS- P) was 2.40±0.33, and that there is a relationship between the age, gender, educational status and duration of work of nurses and the PBS, and that there was a relationship between the mean of PBS-O and the evening pain intensity score, and that there is a positive correlation between PBS-O and PBS-P. In line with the results obtained from the research, it is recommended to regularly evaluate the severity of pain in trauma patients, pay attention to their education level in the pain assessment, give more importance to education in order to increase the similarity in patient-nurse evaluations in pain assessment in trauma patients and to better understand the nature of pain, and develop pain assessment and management protocols to provide pain control. Key Words: Trauma, Pain, Pain Assessment, Pain Beliefs, Nurse