Nurses' experiences with regard to post-operative pain level assessment in surgical wards at selected public hospital in Gauteng Province

The researcher used qualitative explorative, descriptive and contextual research design for this study. Individual face-to-face interviews were conducted with thirteen professional nurses. Participants were purposively selected from surgical wards at the selected public hospital in Gauteng Province. Thematic data analysis was used to identify themes and sub-themes. Three themes emerged from the study. These themes include ways of assessing post-operative pain levels, factors influencing post-operative pain level assessment and suggestions for improving post-operative pain level assessment.

The findings of the current study indicated that lack of standardised pain assessment tools, nurse-patient ratio, lack of in-service education, lack of commitment and lack of interprofessional communication are the most concerning factors in the surgical wards. These findings were enhanced with direct quotations from the transcriptions as verbalized by surgical wards nurses during semi-structured interviews and affected the participant’s quality nursing care in the surgical wards.