Abstract:

Background: Postoperative pain is the type of pain experienced after surgery due to tissue damage and muscle spasm during surgical procedures. Pain may be moderate to severe and may vary from patient to patient depending on severity of the procedures and amount of tissue damage during surgical procedures.

Methodology: The study was a hospital based, prospective cross-sectional study conducted in the surgical wards of urology and Orthopedics at BMC from May to June 2019. Data was obtained through structured questionnaires and through checklist patient’s files. The data obtained was entered into Microsoft excel and analysed using SPSS version 23.

Results: Of 151 patients (44.4%) experienced severe postoperative pain, (47.7%) experienced moderate pain and (7.9%) had no pain. Some patients (60.9%) had pain interference with other activities such as walking, sitting and standing. Pethidine was the most prescribed drug whereby Pethidine given was 44% while Pethidine combined with other medication was 45.1%.

Conclusion and Recommendations: Timing of the medication is one of the factors that affect appropriate management of pain among postoperative patients. Health care providers should adhere to the proper timing of the medication so as to avoid much pain that may be faced by the patient due to delaying to receive medication. Further studies on ways of improving quality management of postoperative pain.