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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| How should nurses assess pain in people with advanced dementia? | | Author(s) | Sophie Milner |
| Journal title | Ageing and Health: the Journal of the Institute of Ageing and Health (West Midlands), no 21, 2017 |
| Publisher | Institute of Ageing and Health West Midlands, 2017 |
| Pages | pp 20-24 |
| Source | www.iah-wmids.org.uk |
| Keywords | Pain ; Dementia ; Diagnosis ; Nurses ; Literature reviews. |
| Annotation | Pain in people with advanced dementia is commonly undetected or misinterpreted by nursing staff, because these people are usually unable to communicate verbally. The author conducted this literature review to investigate how nurses should assess pain in people with advanced dementia within acute settings, and whether this should be through standardised pain assessment tools, clinical judgement or a combination of both. The databases CINAHL, ASSIA and Medline Ovid were searched. Relevant papers were selected and critically appraised to determine the strength of the evidence and the risk of bias, to ensure that the soundest evidence was focused on the most. Eight papers using three main methods were identified: observational method; clinical judgement of pain assessment; and standardised tools in pain assessment. Barriers to effective pain assessment were identified. There is limited evidence on assessing pain in people with advanced dementia within acute settings. Most of the research relies on people in nursing homes typically with a mild or moderate diagnosis of dementia. Currently there is no established consensus on how to assess pain in people with advanced dementia in acute settings. While there are inconsistencies in the literature, the main consensus seems to focus on pain assessment tools. This ambiguity suggests that further research is needed to ascertain how in people living with advanced dementia within acute settings can be assessed. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-170421213 A |
| Classmark | CT7: EA: LK7: QTE: 64A |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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