When choosing this topic I knew with pain management we so often immediately move right to pain medications. Sometimes I have seen nurses offer heat packs and ice packs, but I feel like we all get in the routine of charting a patient’s pain on a scale of 1-10 and immediately looking at the MAR for what medications correspond to the appropriate pain level. With regards to end stage renal disease patients which was the primary focus population of our project, many of these patients live with chronic pain. I learned so much about pain management with this project. Prior to this project I knew pain management could be approached from multiple perspectives, however, the literature provided me with much more knowledge about the many strategies. Some of these include but are not limited to resistance training and stabilization,  acupuncture, massages, distraction therapies, psychosocial, acupuncture, and interdisciplinary pain program interventions. The literature review has changed my assumptions and quite frankly routine around approaching pain. 

As a group, we needed to revise the topic slightly at the beginning to narrow in our scope. Originally, we were going to have the topic approach only non-pharmacological strategies to pain management however we really wanted to focus in on in on opioids. Part of the reason we wanted to switch it to specifically opioids is because for this specific population, chronic opioid has been associated with a multitude of side effects including an increased risk of altered mental status, falls, fractures, hospitalizations, and mortality. Additionally, chronic opioid use can be a factor in increased misuse post hospitalization for these patients as well.  

This is going to impact my future nursing practice through the teamwork aspect and knowledge around the approach to pain management. I think above all else, it will make me really stop and think about a holistic approach to approaching pain, rather than immediately looking to the MAR. Pain management is a topic that is multifaceted, and needs to continue being interdisciplinary. In the future I will make a conscious effort to approach their pain through interdisciplinary approaches of making referrals particular to massage therapists, acupuncture specialists. Sometimes even offering the patient other therapeutic activities including adult coloring books, guided imagery, or music of their choice can make such a difference. All in all, we were very successful as a team. We did have some minor challenges as a team including expectations around communication, time management and delegating team tasks in a fair manor. We were very respectful of each other’s ideas. Our biggest success was doing our draft for our project proposal when we divided out into partners to do sections of the proposal then worked as a cohesive group to make the final draft.