RESUMO
Pain is often inadequately controlled for hospitalized patients specially children. There are barriers to pain assessment of hospitalized children such as lack of appropriate pain assessment tool, lack of specific regulations and policies and nurses' insufficient knowledge and skills. The present study aimed at determining the effects of establishing a nursing commission of pain management on empowering nurses within pain assessment process. A quasi-experimental study was conducted with a sample of 64 nurses who were recruited in the study through cluster randomized sampling method. The samples were drawn from Emergency room, Surgery and Orthopedic units of Vali-e Asr Hospital as the control group and Imam Khomeini Hospital as the intervention group, in 2007. Data was gathered using questionnaires of demographic information; nurses empowering tools on pain assessment process of children [consisted of recognition of pain assessment, self reporting of quality and quantity of pain assessment, pain assessment measurement, checklist on skills of documenting pain assessment]. After taking pretest, nursing commission of pain management for nurses' empowerment was established, which followed by undertaking a post-test. All statistics were computed by the SPSS software [version 12]. Findings revealed that mean scores of nurses recognition of pain assessment was increased from 7.7 to 12.9 in intervention group and from 8.4 to 8.6 in control group. Regarding self reporting of quality and quantity of pain assessment, the values turned from 1.9 to 2.8 in intervention group and 2.1 to 2.2 in control group. Pain assessment measuring increased from 0.11 to 0.72 in intervention group and.10 to 0.10 in control group. Pain assessment documentation skill improved from 0.03 to 0.72 in experimental group while there were no changes in control group [0.03]. Nurses' empowerment was progressed significantly after establishing the pain management commission [P=0.01]. The results indicated that establishing pain commission increased nurse's competencies in assessing pain. Therefore, establishing the nursing commission of pain management in other hospitals is recommended to influence nurses' empowerment and children pain assessments, considering its effectiveness and inexpensiveness, with no need for new staffs and budget