Reinforcing Teach-back Method Regarding Pain Management for Non-verbal Patients and their Families

Pain has been known to have physiologic, psychologic and emotional consequences. Education in pain management has been part for standard care for nurses. The purpose of this study was to reinforce teach-back techniques with nurses when delivering pain management education with non-verbal patients in order to improve patient outcomes in the adult ICU. By using the teach-back method, the nurse will be able to hone a more collaborative approach in dealing with pain, encourage autonomy and include the patient/family in making informed decisions regarding treatment for pain. Reinforcement regarding teach-back was focused on teaching points, and rewording teach-back cues to better engage with the patient/family and acquire more data, not just for the education but for their routing cares as well. A family guide was used as a visual aid for the teaching. A survey was conducted, pre-/post-reinforcement whether or not the nurses do teach-back and observations and family interviews were done after the reinforcement of teach-back technique. The findings show that four out of five family interviews found the guide to be useful, and four out of five nurses found the guide to be useful