Acute pain: nurses' clinical judgement in postoperative cardiac surgery

Abstract

The objective of this study was to identify nursing diagnosis for acute pain in patients'postoperative cardiac surgery. It is a quantitative descriptive study conducted in an Intensive Care Unit of a Referral Hospital in the state of Goiás. Pain was assessed when coughing, deep breathing, vomiting, and resting. The sample comprised 37 patients on a third postoperative cardiac surgery. Data was collected between October 2009 and April 2010. Myocardial revascularization was the most frequent surgery (62.1%). Pain intensity was classified as mild in general pain and with coughing; moderate on taking a deep breath, vomiting, and resting. Pain was located mostly in the sternal region and the analgesic usually prescribed was dipyrone. Nursing diagnosis for acute pain was associated with harmful agents (100%) and the main defining characteristics with significant associations (p = <0.05) were guarded behaviour, facial expressions, and protective gestures. The present study characterized acute pain in post-operative patients by means of nursing diagnosis and numeric rating scale to typify acute pain. The use of a one-dimensional instrument to measure pain may contribute to the nurses' clinical judgement in the face of cardiac surgery postoperative difficulties.