Pain management standards

All accredited healthcare organizations have been required to comply with JCAHO’s pain management standards since 2001, but many have struggled to comply.

The standards recognize the rights of patients to assess and manage pain and implore health care organizations to assure staff competency in pain assessment and management.

Here are the eight steps you can take to comply with the standards:

1. Develop an interdisciplinary work group that focuses on pain management.
2. Analyze current pain management practices to determine how you can improve.
3. Articulate and implement a standard of practice – who assesses pain, how do they do it, when do they do it.
4. Establish accountability for pain management.
5. Provide clinicians with information about pharmacologic interventions to help them write and implement orders.
6. Provide patients a quick response to their reports of pain.
7. Provide education of staff – programs for nurses are especially helpful.
8. Use patient surveys and performance measurements to continually evaluate and improve the quality of pain management.



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