The Patient Experience

Abstract

There are few things more terrifying than being a patient in a hospital. This imposed dependency is not only disorienting but extremely unsettling. Fear seizes the principal and his supportive family. The fear of surviving the episode is first followed closely by the fear of pain. Dr. Berwick, Founder of the Institution of Healthcare Improvement describes the patient’s request as “cure me, don’t hurt me, and be nice to me” as the frequent patient lament. Controlling pain is definitely within our skill set as healthcare providers. Nevertheless, we frequently fail miserably to adequately treat patient’s pain. The patient perception of pain is so important that it has been added as the fifth vital sign by state legislators and is prominent in the 27 questions from the Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAHPS). Here, we concluded appropriate pain management was equal to quality patient care. We further decided as an organization that painful suffering would no longer be tolerated as a part of our patient’s experience. At CVHP, we discovered proper pain management was not a new concept in our hospitals but the proper implementation of a system wide pain management program had never been effectively done. We created a single multiple disciplinary pain management protocol throughout our healthcare delivery system, supervised by a system wide pain management committee. Few elements impact the in-hospital patient experience more than pain management. As doctors, we need to set aside our anachronistic M.D. physician centered pain management approach.