Postoperative pain management practice and associated factors among nurses working at public hospitals, in Oromia region, Ethiopia, 2021: an institution-based cross-sectional study

Background Management of postoperative pain leads to positive patient progress and shortens the duration of hospital stay. There is a lack of information on nurse's postoperative pain management practice and its associated factors. Objective To assess postoperative pain management practice and associated factors among nurses working in public hospitals of West Shoa Zone, Oromia, Ethiopia, 2021. Design An institutional-based cross-sectional study was employed. Setting Study was conducted among eight public hospitals (two tertiary hospitals and six secondary hospitals), which were located in West Shoa Zone in Oromia, Ethiopia. Participants Totally 377 participants were selected by using simple random sampling. From this, 277 were men and 100 participants were women. All nurses who were worked in surgical ward, medical wards, minor operation room and major operation room, recovery rooms, emergency, obstetrics and gynaecology wards were included. Methods Data were collected by distributing structured self-administered questionnaires that adapted from different literatures and were entered into Epi data V.3.1 and exported to SPSS V.22 for analysis. Variables with significant association in the bivariate analyses were entered into a multivariable regression analysis to identify the independent factors associated with nurses' postoperative pain management practice. Significant factors were declared at p<0.05. Result The result showed that 66% of nurses had good pain management practice. Nurses favourable attitude towards postoperative pain management (adjusted OR (AOR): 4.698, 95% CI (2.725 to 8.100)), having access to read pain management guideline (AOR: 3.112, 95% CI (1.652 to 5.862)), adequate knowledge of postoperative pain management (AOR: 2.939, 95% CI (1.652 to 5.227)), working at operation room (AOR: 2.934, 95% CI (1.27 to 6.795)) and received training on pain management (AOR: 3.289, 95% CI (1.461 to 7.403)) were significantly associated with the practices of postoperative pain management. Conclusion and recommendation 65% of participants (nurses) have a good level of practice of postoperative pain management. Training, access to pain management guidelines, knowledge and attitude are significant factors in postoperative pain management practice. Governmental and other bodies concerned to postoperative care quality needs to show commitment on availing needed training and infrastructures.