Table 3 Nurses’ attitude toward PCA (N = 303)

Pain

assessment

You can conduct a pain assessment when you care for patients experiencing pain.

You can accept patients’ subjective judgements when they complain of pain.

You can evaluate the severity of pain, vital signs, consciousness level, mental status, and history of allergy to opioids before giving patients use of PCA.

Management

strategies

for PCA

You would not ask patients to endure their pain because of concerns regarding side effects (i.e., overdose) when patients complain that opioid analgesics are ineffective.

You re-evaluate patients’ pain and discuss adjustments of the type, route, and dosage of analgesics with the doctor when a patient complains that analgesics are ineffective.

You evaluate patients continually and discuss the adjustment of analgesic doses with doctors in a timely manner for high-risk patients, such as individuals with poor renal function, obesity, or obstructive sleep apnea, and for those older than 70 years old, who are more likely to experience side effects when using opioid analgesics.

You agree that analgesic-relevant training helps you understand how to use analgesics and evaluate the effects and adverse side effects of analgesics.

You educate patients using PCA on the adverse side effects of opioids and how to use the PCA device.

Administration

of PCA

You agree that PCA-knowledge-relevant training helps you understand how to educate patients to use PCA and address the problems resulting from PCA.

When patients experience pain, you encourage them to push the button for PCA administration immediately and tell them that it will not result in an overdose.

You agree that PCA is a safe mode of medication administration and that it can relieve patients’ pain effectively.

You agree that PCA is easy to use and to troubleshoot.

You agree that PCA can help to reduce the dose of analgesics required and the occurrence of side effects.

You evaluate patients’ needs and ask doctors to recommend the use of PCA to patients.

You believe that the various routes and medication types for administering PCA are a potential source of error for nurses during analgesia administration.