Determination of the implementation of nursing final class students on post-operative pain management

Pain Awareness is an important step in effective pain management and should be developed in healthcare professionals in prior to graduation. This research was conducted retrospectively and definitively-cross-sectional to determine the applications of nursing students to pain management. The research was conducted with 108 care plans that meet the sample criteria in the 2017-2018 academic year surgical diseases nursing (Intern) course of the senior students of the Department of Nursing, Faculty of Health Sciences of Çukurova University. The data were collected with patient identification information form and pain management applications form. The data obtained from the research were evaluated with SPSS 24.0 statistical package program. Descriptive statistics (number, percentile calculation and average) were used in the analysis of the data. In the evaluation, students who received 70 and above from the applications were considered successful. Pain management practices that students are best at; defining pain symptoms (100%), adding the patient to pain assessment (100%), using pain scale (98.1%), specifying pain severity (98.1%), recording pain assessment (100%), applying pharmacological and non-pharmacological analgesia (89.8%). However, the most unsuccessful pain management practices of the students were to communicate pain management data to the team (1.9%), specify the duration of pain (3.7%), diagnose pain according to the cause of pain (14%), inform the patient and family about pain management (21.3%). The overall pain management practice point average of the students was 58.05 ± 15.16, with only 27.8% receiving 70 points and above. If pain management is to be considered as a whole, the students ' post-operative pain management practices need to be improved. Pain management is at the helm of practices that best demonstrate the independent roles of nurses. Therefore, students ' awareness of pain management before graduation should be supported both by theoretical courses and by the right role model nurses in the clinic.