Management of postoperative pain among health professionals working in governmental hospitals in South Wollo Zone, Northeast Ethiopia. Prospective cross sectional study.

Introduction: Pain is a distressing experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage with sensory, emotional, cognitive and social components. Inadequate postoperative pain management leads to negative clinical outcomes such as extended hospitalization, poor recovery, diminished and decreases the quality of life, increased healthcare costs and utilization, higher morbidity and mortality, and the development of chronic pain. The study was used for the hospitals administrations, health professionals, committee that develop the pain management guideline, researcher, and governmental health institutions regarding the practice of postoperative pain management. The aim of this study was to assess the management of postoperative pain among health professionals working in governmental hospitals in South Wollo Zone, Ethiopia. Methods and materials: A hospital-based prospective cross-sectional study was conducted from February 20, 2022 to March 25, 2022. The study population was selected from South Wollo Zone governmental hospitals and 386 samples were collected using a self-administered questionnaire and verified, coded and entered into Epidata software version 3.1 and it exported to SPSS version 23 for analyze. To summarize descriptive statistics frequencies, percentages, and mean were used and presented with tables, charts, and figures. Result: 386 participants were involved and making up 95.8% of the response rate. Among the respondents, 97.9% of the respondents had used pharmacological management. 51.3% applied non-pharmacological and 66.1% applied multimodality management of postoperative pain. Among pharmacological management, 48.7% of systemic analgesics technique, 26.3% of regional analgesics technique, and 25.0% of patient-controlled epidural analgesics, whereas in non-pharmacological management 40.4% of cold and heat application followed by 32.3% of immobilization was applied to the management of postoperative pain. Conclusion and recommendation: The overall level of pharmacological, non-pharmacological and multimodality approach of post-operative pain management among health professionals in the study area was more than ninety, half and more than half of the participants, respectively. Postoperative pain management found in many key areas of postoperative pain management has an impact on the provision of effective pain management and optimal care given to surgical patients. This study provided an opportunity for health professionals working in hospitals, to evaluate themselves in the area of postoperative related to pain management.