A Literature Review Study on the Effectiveness of Pre-operative Education for Post-operative Pain Management

Abstract

Context: Post-operative pain (POP) is one of the essential consequences of various surgeries in surgical patients, and various pharmacological and non-pharmacological methods should reduce it. Due to the side effects of medicinal methods, the use of non-medicinal methods has attracted the attention of nurses and health care workers nowadays. Considering this issue, the main goal of this study was to evaluate pre-operative education (POE) on the reduction of POP in surgical patients. Evidence Acquisition: This narrative review evaluated previous research from 1990 to 2024. Accordingly, 184 studies were obtained in the first search stage through advanced search in national and international databases, including Web of Science, Islamic World Science Citation Center (ISC), Scopus, PubMed, Magiran, and Google Scholar, Iran-Doc. Then, considering the inclusion and exclusion criteria, 22 studies were considered for the present review study. Results: Based on the present review, most evaluated studies (approximately 64%) showed that POE positively and significantly affects POP. Previous studies have reported that various parameters play a role in the impact of POE on POP, including the type of surgery, the length of follow-up, the continuity of care, the method of providing training, the quality of the intervention, the patient's awareness of the pain measurement method, with or without the educator's interaction and empathy during education, and the presence or absence of patient anxiety during training. Conclusions: Considering the positive and significant effect of POE on POP, nurses and caregivers of patients who are candidates for surgery should use the appropriate educational content and educational methods to reduce POP in patients according to the type of surgery and other influencing variables. However, before that, the nurses themselves should get enough information about the different methods of POE so that they can convey the educational content to the patients with proper quality and efficiency.