Motivational Interviewing and Pain Management: Improving Patient Satisfaction

The pain management issues were reported in the literature for many years and continue to be a major challenge in healthcare. The purpose of this project presentation is to understand the impact of ‘Motivational Interviewing”, an evidence-based patient-centered approach to improving the patient satisfaction with the nursing care of pain management among acute medical-surgical patients in an inpatient hospital setting. The PICOT question is “Among acute medical-surgical patients, how does the use of motivational interviews at the time of admission influence patient satisfaction associated with the management of pain during hospitalization?” The project was done in a comprehensive hospital in the Southeast Texas. Convenience sampling method was used to recruit the subjects. Jean Watson’s Theory of Human caring and Rogers’s diffusion of innovation theory guided the planning and implementation of the project. The patient’s beliefs and perceptions about the pain were assessed using the Pain Beliefs and Perception Inventory (PBPI) tool. The Pain Care Quality-Nursing Care (Pain CQ-N) survey and HCAHPS reports were used to measure the patient's experience with the pain management. The project yields positive outcome to the nursing care component of the survey by demonstrating more than 80% of the Pain CQ-N survey participants strongly agreed on the consistency in pain assessment, teaching about pain management strategies and the overall satisfaction with the nursing care. The consistency in pain assessment was strongly agreed by 97% of the participants. In addition, 94% of the participants strongly agreed on being comfortable in asking questions with the nurses, and overall satisfaction with the nursing care. Nurse attentiveness in believing their report of pain was strongly agreed by 92% of the MI participants. The findings are relevant to the nursing practice, since the knowledge and skill of clinical nurses in practicing a patient-centered approach in pain management is important to enhance the patient satisfaction with the pain management.