Introduction
Chronic pain is a pervasive and complex issue that significantly impacts patients’ quality of life and poses challenges for healthcare professionals. As a nurse working in a healthcare setting, I have witnessed firsthand the struggles that patients with chronic pain face and the need for improved pain management strategies. This realization has led me to choose the topic of enhancing chronic pain management for my capstone project. In this background analysis, I will discuss why this project is crucial for my nursing practice and the overall nursing profession, focusing on three key areas of impact for each domain.
Importance of the Capstone Project for Personal Nursing Practice
Improving Patient-Centered Care
It will reinforce the strongest reason—lying behind focusing on the chronic pain aspect—for the improvement in my already existing ability to direct the center of my work activity toward patient-centered care. As Jansen et al. (2020) point out, “Patient-centered care, which takes into consideration individual health needs and desired health outcomes, is a requirement for high-quality health care” (p. 2). While the understanding of the chronic nature of the illnesses and good management prepared me now better than ever to do the same for specific needs, desires, and goals, the statements together also made great summaries of purpose. This will better enable me to facilitate stronger therapeutic relations with my patients and try my level best to engage them in their care.
Enhancing Clinical Skills and Knowledge
Besides, being part of this capstone project will contribute toward enhancing my clinical competencies in dealing with patients’ chronic pain. The numerous and dynamic nature of nursing practice means that professionals stay updated on new evidence-based practices and trends in the assessment and treatment of pain. Through going through this project, I will be able to interact with and incorporate recent research, guidelines, and best practices in chronic pain. This will enable me to be in a better position to assess pain more accurately, intervene on time, and evaluate the outcome of the treatment provided. Moreover, further development related to advanced clinical competency and clinical judgment will place me into a better slot than what I am now for delivering quality, patient-centered, evidence-based practice in managing chronic pain.
Promoting Interprofessional Collaboration
Chronic pain is a highly complex issue that urgently calls for a multidisciplinary approach to its management. It is this reason alone that gives importance to this capstone project, for it will solicit and encourage teamwork among professionals in the management of chronic pain through practitioners from the multitudinous disciplines that are doctors, pharmacists, practitioners, and mental health caregivers, among others. This way, I will understand and appreciate the contribution each different member makes. This will help me execute synchronization properly, follow through with the therapy, and defend what patients want in the medical setup.
Impact of the Capstone Project on the Nursing Profession
Advancing Evidence-Based Practice
The chronic pain management capstone project would be of aid in the effort toward moving evidence-based practice within the nursing professional settings. Studies depicted that such a project is bound to come up with an evidence synthesis and a review of what is relevant in literature, giving a strategy and interventions that work towards the management of chronic pain. According to Tick et al., 2018, “Given poor outcomes and considerations of safety over the long term with opioid therapy, nonpharmacologic treatment approaches represent an important dimension for many patients with chronic pain” (p. 178). The findings of this project and recommendations, therefore, will inform nurses in practice across the world of the evidence-based, current approaches toward managing chronic pain to enhance quality in patient outcomes and healthcare.
Enhancing Nursing Education and Training
In addition, the capstone may be of help through the spirit of the improvement of long-life nursing education and practice over the matter of pain management. According to Schroeder et al. (2019), “nurses play a significant role in pain management” (p. 109) as they constantly observe, intervene, and evaluate not only its identification but also its occurrence and treatment. Identification of the current knowledge gap, as well as areas that need improvement, in nursing curriculums and professional development programs, could enable the design and implementation of educational initiatives to better prepare the nursing workforce in the assessment and management of chronic pain, further equipping them with tools and techniques for quality, patient-centered chronic pain care.
Promoting Advocacy and Policy Change
Lastly, the capstone project’s involvement in chronic pain management can raise advocacy and bring policy change in the nursing profession. As nurses wear their professional hats, it will enable them to define clearly systemic barriers as well as those in other chronic pain management as they advocate for changes touching on the way healthcare policies and practice perspectives are handled. By participating in this project, I will have more information on complex matters like guidelines on prescribing opioids, access to non-pharmacological treatment, and support services on patient education in all the aspects of chronic pain. In that case, having such information at hand, I will be in a better place to advocate for patients with chronic pain in every effort to influence organizational policy and collaborate with stakeholders in contributing to more comprehensive and more patient-centered approaches to the pain management problem.
Conclusion
Last but not least, involvement in issues over the Chronic Pain Management Caps project raises an advocacy and policy change in the nursing profession. It would enable nurses, as they wear their professional hats, to define in very clear terms what the systemic benefits and those of chronic pain management are as they advocate changes that touch on the way the policies of health care and practice perspectives are handled. This project would have exposed a position to get various details regarding jurisdictions that strictly include the rules and guidelines, which has developed by the doctors for prescribing some dosages, access to the non-phjsoncupro medicines for treatment, access the support services adequately related to the patient education, and managing every aspect of the chronic pain. On the same note, I will thus be equipped with much better information in my efforts to stand up and advocate for the chronic pain patient in all my efforts to influence organizational policy and collaborate with all stakeholders towards innovative, more holistic, and patient-centered ways of looking at the problem pertaining to pain management.
References:
Jansen, L., Schemmel, A., & Prather, L. (2020). Chronic pain management: Strategies for improving patient care and satisfaction. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 10(6), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.5430/jnep.v10n6p1
Schroeder, D. L., Hoffman, L. A., Fioravanti, M., Medley, D. P., Zullo, T. G., & Tuite, P. K. (2019). Enhancing nurses’ pain assessment to improve patient satisfaction. Orthopedic Nursing, 38(2), 108-117. https://doi.org/10.1097/NOR.0000000000000521
Tick, H., Nielsen, A., Pelletier, K. R., Bonakdar, R., Simmons, S., Glick, R., Ratner, E., Lemmon, R. L., Wayne, P., & Zador, V. (2018). Evidence-based nonpharmacologic strategies for comprehensive pain care: The Consortium Pain Task Force white paper. EXPLORE, 14(3), 177-211. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2018.02.001
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