Avatar Solutions Blog Key Drivers of Patient Experience: Pain Management

Ask a few colleagues or friends to tell you what they think when you say the word "hospital," and you'll likely get a variety of answers. You might hear "healing" or "care." Though, if your respondents are being honest, you're probably just as likely to hear "fear" or "pain."Unfortunately, pain is often an integral part of patients' experiences of care. In fact, over 70% of inpatients report needing medicine for pain during their hospital stay1. As such, patients' perceptions regarding how their pain has been managed during care are important for organizations and consumers to be aware of. This is one of the reasons measures of pain management are included on HCAHPS and other patient surveys.As part of our patient experience research, Avatar regularly conducts studies into the factors driving important patient experience outcomes for healthcare organizations nationwide. Our studies have identified pain management as one of the top drivers of patient satisfaction among several care settings. Thus, performance on pain management measures such as those included on HCAHPS are important for healthcare leaders to understand.In this article, we'll briefly explore what Avatar's research says about pain management in terms of the patient experience, as well as several approaches for improving patients' experiences with pain management.