Nursing diagnosis Chronic Pain from the patients' perspective

Chronic pain is one of the priority problems in palliative care. The study objective was the validation of the nursing diagnosis of Chronic Pain (00133) in patients in palliative care. It is a retrospective study. To evaluate the defining characteristics of the nursing diagnosis, we used the patient-focused clinical diagnostic validity model of Fehring, which uses information obtained directly from patients. We designed a questionnaire-type measurement tool containing 15 defining characteristics of the nursing diagnosis of Chronic Pain (00133). The sample included n = 83 patients in palliative care who were treated for pain for at least six months. The defining characteristics were rated by the patients on the Likert-type scale (from 1 - not at all characteristic of me, to 5 - very characteristic of me). After data collection, we calculated weighted scores (WS) for each of the defining characteristics. We used correlation analysis to analyze the relationships between the risk factors. None of the 15 defining characteristics were considered major by the patients. Seven defining characteristics were considered minor: pain (0.68), changes in sleep pattern (0.55), altered ability to continue previous activities (0.54), fatigue (0.52), atrophy of the involved muscle group (0.51), fear of re-injury (0.51), and restlessness (0.50). Eight defining characteristics were discarded by the patients. A statistically significant relationship was found between eight pairs of the minor defining characteristics, p < 0.01. The study results suggest the essential defining characteristics that may help nurses in identifying and defining an accurate nursing diagnosis in clinical practice.