Pain Management Program for Dementia Patients

There are evidence based processes for assessment and management of pain using pharmacologic and nonpharmacological approaches. These were reviewed and included within the Pain Management Clinical Practice Guideline (Pain Management CPG) recently developed by AMDA: The Society for Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine. There are, however, many challenges to translating the use of Clinical Practice Guidelines into clinical settings. To overcome these challenges we developed and previously tested a theoretically based approach and merged this approach with the Pain Management CPG, which is referred to as the PAIN-CLINICAL PRACTICE GUIDELINE-USING THE EVIDENCE INTEGRATION TRIANGLE (PAIN-CPG-EIT). The PAIN-CPG-EIT involves a research nurse facilitator working with an identified community champion(s) and stakeholder team for 12 months to provide the following four components: Component I: Establishing and meeting monthly with a Stakeholder Team; Component II: Education of the staff; Component III: Mentoring and motivating the staff to address pain; Component IV: Ongoing evaluation of resident pain outcomes. Twelve communities will be included with 25 residents living with dementia and pain recruited from each community. Six communities will be randomized to treatment (PAIN-CPG-EIT) and six randomized to education only (EO) which involves providing the same education to staff as is done in Component II of PAIN-CPG-EIT. The primary aim of this study is to test the effectiveness of use of the PAIN-CPG-EIT to improve the assessment, diagnosis and management of pain and decrease pain intensity among nursing home residents living with dementia between baseline, 4 and 12 months and evaluate treatment fidelity. A secondary aim of the study is to consider differences in measurement, treatment and response to treatment between male and female and Black versus White residents living with dementia. Findings from this study will help build on the currently limited information about pain presentation and management among older adults living with dementia in nursing homes and improve health equity of aging populations experiencing pain.