First Year Residents' Knowledge and Practice Related to Postoperative Pain Management

Abstract

Background and Objective: The first year residents play an important role in postsurgical pain control. Assessing their knowledge and their practice is a key of success to improve their learning and patient service. We conducted this study to assess the first year residents’ knowledge and practice of postoperative pain management.

Materials and Methods: A questionnaire was sent to all 45 first year residents from 5 surgical related departments.  The questionnaire consisted of 35 questions, 15 questions were constructed for knowledge assessment and 20 questions for practice behavior. The knowledge scores were classified into five levels (excellent, good, average, fair, and poor). Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics.

Results: The response rate was 97.78%. The mean knowledge was 10.23 + 2.02 and 68.2 percent from a total of 15 scores. The highest score was 14 and the lowest was 6. Their regular practice behaviors were about pain assessment (100%) and treatment of opioids side effect (66.36%). The areas that should encourage more practices were local infiltration at surgical field (43.19%) and using NSAIDs in combined with opioids (31.82%). Their knowledge that needs to be improved was about pharmacology of opioids and its common side effects such as nausea and vomiting.

Conclusion: The level of first year residents’ knowledge and practice of postoperative pain management is an average that needs to be improved as well as some practice behaviors.