Background: Continuing education for registered nurses is a component of safe, effective pain management in every clinical setting.
Methods: Two hundred ninety-one registered nurses from seven counties in rural southwestern Virginia completed a 22-item survey that assessed their interest in pain management topics.
Results: The mean interest score for all respondents was 4.04 (range = 1 to 5). Mean interest scores did not differ significantly between younger and older respondents (t = 1.034, p = .302) or between clinical settings (t = 0.479, p = .632). The mean interest scores for nurses with an associate's degree in nursing/diploma and those with a bachelor of science in nursing or higher were 4.19 and 3.88, respectively, and the difference was statistically significant (t = 3.535, p < .001).
Conclusion: Nearly 300 registered nurses from communities in the southwestern Virginia area of Appalachia indicated interest in a wide variety of pain management topics. Nurses with at most an associate's degree in nursing/diploma were significantly more interested in pain management education than those with a bachelor of science in nursing or higher degree. The overall interest scores were high, indicating that the respondents found the topics salient to their clinical practice.
Copyright 2012, SLACK Incorporated.