The Hospital without pain
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After the operation it is fundamental to protect the patients even by the control of pain, a personalized antalgic therapy allows the patient to do not suffer and recover better and faster.
Avoiding the “useless” pain is a fundamental principle on which even the Veneto Region decided to take a position. Indeed, the Regional Council of Veneto decided to establish the palliative care and fight against cancer observatory. This organism has the task to support the planning and sustain the activities conducted by the health authorities, producing the technical equipment and realizing formatives programmes and development of applied research to health services. In accordance with local regulations, the Clinica San Francesco established the Committee “Hospital without pain”. In this respect the anesthesiologist of the Clinic, MD Francesca Vargiu, explained us what it means to protect the patients from the “useless” pain.
What does it mean “Hospital without pain”?
“Avoiding the pain is a right of all, a fundamental ethical principle which is gradually entering in our culture, indeed since 2014 we established in our Clinic the Committee “Hospital without pain” involving several medical and nursing professional figures who attend to protect the patients especially in the treatment of acute postoperative pain. Our cornerstone aim is to fight the main effects of pain after operation with the minimal incidence of side effects connected to the procedures and analgesic drugs effects; the whole thing to entrust the operated patient to rehabilitation staff which attends to the functional recovery in order to restore the normal capacities and functionalities of patient’s organism.”
How important is the control of orthopaedic pain?
“The orthopaedic pain represents the main cause that determines the request of surgical treatment; it follows that the patient nurtures great expectations on disappearance of pain after operation and immediate functional resumption. An adecuate postoperative antalgic treatment influences positively the clinical management of patient”.
How does pain control work?
“The patients’ protocol follows a multidisciplinary and multimodal approach to optimize the perioperative treatments, so includes various professional figures: orthopaedists, anesthetists, physiatricians, physiotherapists, nurses and internists ensure that the clinical conditions of patient look always their best. The aim of staff consists in giving back the patient autonomy right after the operation such as to get out of bed, go to the toilet and walk; this thanks to a good control of pain and an excellent rehabilitation. The pain is a personal experience, every patient has his/her perception and so his/her tolerance threshold; it is obvious that this aspect has to be considered as soon as we arrange the antalgic therapy. Although it is not the only aspect to consider. It is important to talk with our patients to know as much as possible their emotive and emotional part, aspects that compose and influence the pain perception: everyone perceives the pain on the basis of his/her threshold which changes from person to person and it is conditioned by physical, emotive and psychological causes. This implies that the answer of nervous system to tissue damage uses reactions determined by personal interpretation and furthermore can change on the basis of the emotional state of the moment. Our aim is to avoid that our patients feel pain because this risks compromising the heal and, especially, rehabilitation path. The operation is painful, we must avoid the suffering and help the patient to come back to normal life as soon as possible.”
