Development of an Application for Nurses in Acute Pain Management

Abstract

      This report depicts the research and development design to develop an application to help nurses manage acute pain in their clients. The study comprises two phases: 1) the application development through literature review and expert consensus and 2) the application’s content validation and user feedback survey. Research tools included issues for literature review and group discussions, and the questionnaire for the experts and users. Three experts determined the questionnaire for its content validity with the item-objective congruence index (IOC) of 0.67-1.00. Six experts in the field and ten users (including nurse administrators and registered nurses) rated the application for its properties, including appropriateness, discrepancy, and feasibility. Qualitative data were analyzed by content analysis. Quantitative data were analyzed by means, and standard deviations.                   

The findings showed that 1) A mobile phone application called N-MAP (Nurses to Manage Acute Pain) version 1.0. Pain management in this application was developed based on different concepts, including the nursing process, ABCDE pain management, and OPQRSTUV for pain assessment. The content analysis shows the application essential structure comprises background information, user direction, pain assessment, pain management instructions, and pain reassessment. 2) Overall, the application’s properties were rated highly ( = 4.41, S.D. = 0.45), with the highest scores for appropriateness (= 4.46, S.D. = 0.43), discrepancy ( = 4.44, S.D. = 0.57), and feasibility (= 4.05, S.D. = 0.82), respectively. We conclude that the application should be used in a real clinical situation and evaluated for its effectiveness on acute pain management outcomes.