ABSTRACT

Pain is one of the most common ailments of geriatrics. Particularly geriatrics in long-term care very commonly experience daily and continuous pain. It is extremely important to guarantee the continuity of pain treatment. The evaluation and planning of pain treatment are of first-rate value to the nursing staff in order to succeed in their daily work.

The purpose of this Bachelor’s thesis was to give an account of the experiences of the nursing staff at a home for the elderly in how pain care treatment was realized at their ward. The objective was to gain new information about this realization through the help of the research results concerning the pain treatment at the ward.

The Bachelor’s thesis was carried out using a qualitative research method and the material was collected by theme interviews. For the research six nurses were interviewed in one ward of a home for the elderly in a Southwest Finland city. The material was evaluated by means of content analysis using the inductive approach. When writing about the results of the study, the nurses' direct quotations were included.

The results that were obtained from this information stated clearly how important the nurses consider the continuity of the care and the mutual reporting within the work community in order to succeed in giving the pain treatment. Improvements are also needed in how pain treatment is recorded and how the continuity of pain treatment can be guaranteed. The nurses experienced as particularly important the mutual information, discussion and recording of the results of the pain treatment. These experiences can thus be considered meaningful subjects for future research and development. The results of the study cannot be more widely generalized but can only be used as a basis when developing the pain treatment of this particular ward.