Date Approved

4-24-2024

Graduate Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Nursing (D.N.P.)

Degree Program

College of Nursing

First Advisor

Dr. Nicole Harpold

Second Advisor

Dr. Barbara Hooper

Academic Year

2023/2024

Abstract

Title of Manuscript: The Efficacy of Implementing a Collaborative Palliative Pain Panel Team to Reduce Cancer Pain Author name: Angela L. Embree Contributing author names: Dr. Nicole Harpold, Grand Valley State University, Dr. XXX XXX, XXX Palliative Care Clinic Key Words: cancer; pain; control; interprofessional care team; multidisciplinary care team; collaborative care Abstract Background: A palliative care clinic established a collaborative pain team to evaluate patients with severe, poorly controlled cancer-related pain. While the clinic collected data, it did not have a process for analyzing it and could not evaluate the effectiveness of this collaborative team. Objective: To evaluate the program’s efficiency by tracking and analyzing pain scores pre intervention and post-intervention and to explore the clinical phenomenon of improving cancer pain through a collaborative approach. Design: Quality improvement program evaluation. Setting and Subjects: Adult oncology patients receiving care at a palliative care ambulatory clinic in the United States. Measurements/Results: Quantitative data, including pre- and post-intervention numeric pain scores, were collected and analyzed using a paired t-test to evaluate the efficacy of the collaborative pain team. The data analysis yielded a small sample size (n=6). Six patients had pre-intervention scores, and (n=3) patients had pre- and post-intervention pain scores. The collaborative pain team interventions did not demonstrate a statistically significant improvement in pain scores from pre-intervention to post-intervention (p = 0.211). Conclusion: While research suggests that a collaborative pain team would be an effective approach to reducing cancer-related pain, this program evaluation yielded statistically insignificant results. Notably, at least one patient had a clinically significant reduction in pain. A limitation of this study was the small sample size; a larger sample size may yield a statistically significant result.

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