Effects of a nursing pain programme on patient outcomes.

The effectiveness of a continuing pain education program, directed to surgical cancer nurses, was investigated in a pretest posttest controlled intervention study. ANCOVA for repeated measures revealed that the programme resulted in a lower pain intensity of surgical colon and breast cancer patients (p = 0.02). However, no effects were found on pain duration, sleepless hours as a result of pain, state anxiety, mood disturbances, and duration of hospitalization. It is assumed that because the pain CE programme had a moderate impact on pain intensity, this had no consequences for the other outcome variables mentioned.