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adherence, it may be that patients' opioid regimens move
toward being guideline-adherent after the initial 24-hour
period, which was not assessed during the study period.
Interestingly, the median number of nursing pain assessment
within the first 24 hours of admission was 3.5 assessments
higher in the postimplementation group compared with the
preimplementation group. This is certainly a positive finding
as increased pain assessments have been associated with
improvement in analgesia rates, but the pain scoring tool did
not have a direct effect on this endpoint.8
Safety endpoints of bradypnea, hypoxia, and naloxone
use were infrequent, similar among groups, and likely not
affected by the pain score tool. Upon chart review, it was
found that several of the hypoxic events were not opioidrelated but the result of the removal of a patient's nasal cannula either accidently or through a planned breathing trial.
Attainment of analgesia was compared in opioid-tolerant
adult hematology/oncology inpatients presenting with severe
pain. A modest, but statistically nonsignificant, improvement
in pain outcomes was associated with the group exposed to
the pain scoring tool; however, the study was found to be
underpowered to detect this difference.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect
to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

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https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/pain.pdf https://www.nccn.org/professionals/physician_gls/pdf/pain.pdf

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