Pain management among older people in need of help with activities of daily living

The aim of this study was to investigate the use of various pain relief methods among older people in chronic pain and in need of help to manage activities of daily living. People who reported pain and were in need of help to manage activities of daily living were included in the study. The Multidimensional Pain Inventory-Swedish version and a modified version of the Pain Management Inventory were used to study pain and methods of pain relief. The respondents used a variety of methods (median = 3) to relieve their pain; pharmacologic methods, rest, and distraction were the predominant strategies employed. A cluster analysis identified 2 main groups of people: people who used a few well-known methods and were significantly older and people who used a larger repertoire of methods to relieve their pain and reported higher pain severity and interference with daily life. About a third of older people reported inadequate pain relief. These findings stress the need for nurses to inform older people about available methods for pain relief and to do systematic pain assessments to evaluate the effectiveness of various pain relief methods.