Clinical Nursing and Practice

Biography

Biography: Zuleyha Simsek Yaban

Abstract

At the postoperative period, postoperative pain one of the most important patient complains is an acute pain starting with surgical trauma, lessening gradually and ending by the tissue recovery. The essential aim in nursing care of postoperative pain is to do patient assessment with nursing approachess. Furthermore pharmacologic and non-pharmacologic nursing interventions that included individual plan are to implementation and evaluation. The purpose of this literature review which non-pharmacological methods can be used by nurses to cope with post-operative pain in Turkey. In postoperative pain control, nonpharmacologic pain control methods can be used to increase the effect of analgesics, in case of insufficient effect of analgesics, or when analgesics cannot be used. Among nonpharmacologic postoperative pain control methods, transcutaneous nerve stimulation, application of hot and/or cold compresses, relaxation exercises, music therapy, massage, reflexology, aromatherapy rarely used in postoperative pain control but hypnosis, reiki, yoga and acupuncture can not be implemented by nurses in Turkey. Nonpharmacologic methods can be done by doctors and dentists with application certificate and nurses can only help them within” The Regulation of Traditional and Complementary Medical Applications” on October 10, 2014. On the other hand nurses can perform only hot and/or cold compresses, massage, therapy with music, play and art, acupressure, theropatic touch, imagery, draw attention away and relaxation techniques independently as stated in the “Nursing Regulation” published on April 19, 2011. It may be said that the concept of pain is one of the most important nursing research interests in recent years and the use of complementary and alternative methods to reduce pain has attracted nurses in our country to conduct postgraduate research thereby giving importance to complementary and alternative therapies. It is seen that majority of the studies conducted on nonpharmacologic methods in Turkey were masters or doctoral theses. These methods can not be performed by nurses working at the hospitals in Turkey. The reasons non-pharmacological methods were practiced less frequently by nurses were insufficient number of nurses, patients’ reluctance about pain control, lack of time, and lack of information about pain control. In accordance with these results it is recommended to give more space for teaching the non-pharmacological methods that can be applied for pain management and legal regulations can be improved.