Compact Clinical Guide to Acute Pain Management: An Evidence-based Approach for Nurses

As care providers, we are always looking for best practices and methods for assessing and managing patients’ pain. Unfortunately there is no single standard of practice, pain assessment tool, or medication plan that will be universally applicable. Our patients come in all sizes, with varying histories, capabilities, comorbidities, and tolerance to medications.The Compact Clinical Guide to Acute Pain Management provides an excellent overview of the process of pain management for adult patients in any setting. There are 5 sections in the book, starting with an overview of acute pain, assessing acute pain, medications and treatment for acute pain, advanced pain management techniques, and difficult-to-treat populations.Each section is divided into 2 to 5 chapters addressing specific topics. For example, the overview of acute pain includes a chapter on Standards, Guidelines, Practice Statements, and The Joint Commission Standard for Acute Pain Management. The section on advanced pain management techniques includes perioperative pain management, patient-controlled analgesia, and epidural analgesia as well as regional techniques for postoperative pain management.The information in each chapter is supplemented by tables, figures, clinical pearls, and short case studies to illustrate the concepts presented in the text. There are also sufficient references to support the content.One chapter focuses specifically on assessment tools for acute pain. For each tool the author highlights the patient population for whom this tool is best used and the evidence to support the validity of the scale. Especially important is the discussion of nonverbal, sedated, or nonresponsive patients because these populations pose a particular challenge. The information about the use of pain scales in combination with achieving appropriate assessment for each patient is a point of learning.An additional chapter of special interest is managing patients with active substance abuse or with a history of substance abuse. It is always difficult to ensure that these patients receive appropriate assessment, management, and care.The author is a nurse practitioner who specializes in pain management and palliative care. The audience for Compact Clinical Guide to Acute Pain Management is specifically nurses; however, practitioners at all levels could benefit from this reference, which fits into a lab coat pocket. It is not an exhaustive reference work on specific medications but it does address the different opioids, the use of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs and coanalgesia to improve pain relief.This book is not intended to be the only reference you will use in your study of pain management. It is a quick reference and an adjunct to the goal of lifelong learning.