Management of Acute Pain in the Emergency Department
Management of Acute Pain in the Emergency Department
Oligoanalgesia1 has been widely recognized as an issue in emergency department.The purpose of
 our study is to assess the impact of the implementation of a computer-assisted support
 program to improve pain management in our ED.
Inadequate pain management remains a major challenge for health care providers. Despite
 extensive research on the mechanisms of acute pain, identification of factors leading to poor
 pain management and development of evidence-based strategies, the transfer of this knowledge
 into effective clinical practices has been surprisingly slow. Oligoanalgesia1 has been widely
 recognized as an issue in emergency department (ED) patients. Acute pain is reported by
 60-80% of ED inpatients but is frequently undertreated. Overall, an insufficient proportion
 of patients with acute pain receive any type of analgesia, and pain relief remains
 unsatisfactory. We showed that the implementation of guidelines improved pain management.
 However, rotation of the medical & nursing staff leads to the forgetting of guidelines. The
 purpose of our study is to assess the impact of the implementation of a computer-assisted
 support program to improve pain management in our ED.
Inclusion Criteria:

 Any patient admitted to our Emergency Department who is

 -  age > 16 years

 -  pain lasting =< 1 week or

 -  no pain on admission but pain during the ED stay

 Exclusion Criteria:

 -  life-threatening condition requiring immediate admission in the OR or ICU

 -  no pain or pain lasting >1 week

 -  inability to give informed consent (intoxicated, psychiatric disorder, language
 problem, prisoner)