Abstract

Patients may experience acute pain after cardiopulmonary surgery. Narcotic pain relievers may reduce pain, yet many patients still complained of discomfort at the project site despite the medications provided to reduce it. The purpose of this quantitative quasi-experimental quality improvement project was to determine if the implementation of Kolcaba's comfort verbal and comfort daisies scale assessments combined with the use of non-pharmacologic comfort measures would reduce the narcotic dose and increase the patients' comfort levels among post-cardiopulmonary surgical intensive care patients in an acute care hospital in urban New York over four weeks. Kolcaba's comfort theory guided the project. Narcotic use data were obtained from the hospital pharmacy reporting system on the total sample population of 105, n=82 in the comparative group, and n= 23 in the implementation group. An independent t-test of the narcotic dose data showed a statistically significant decrease in average in narcotic dose (mg) per administration from comparative (M=6.61, SD=8.83) to implementation (M= 2.47, SD=4.46), t (1134) = 7.45, p = .000. The 23 implementation group patients' comfort levels were rated before and after comfort interventions, and the paired samples t-test results showed a clinical and statistically significant increase in ratings from before (M=3.05, SD=2.66) to post-intervention (M=5.27, SD= 3.28), t (21) = -4.49, p=.000. This suggests nonpharmacologic interventions may be effective in improving patients' comfort during their hospitalization. Recommendations include continued monitoring of the data at six months to correlate statistical and clinical significance, larger sample size, and longer time.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 28316738; ProQuest document ID: 2489333708. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Caroline Janga Doe, DNP, ACNP-BC, CNS

Sigma Membership

Alpha Chi

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Quasi-Experimental Study, Other

Research Approach

Quantitative Research

Keywords:

Acute Pain, Cardiopulmonary Surgeries, Discomfort, Kolcaba's Comfort Verbal Scale, Daisies Scales, Nonpharmacologic Comfort Measures

Advisor

Leanne Prenivost

Second Advisor

Frances M. Cavanaugh

Degree

DNP

Degree Grantor

Grand Canyon University

Degree Year

2020

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2021-07-19

Full Text of Presentation

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