Nurses knowledge and attitude regarding pain: A systematic review and meta-analysis

Aim:: To determine through a systematic review and meta-analysis the level of knowledge about pain of nursing health professionals based on their scores on the Knowledge and Attitudes Survey Regarding Pain tool and its subdimensions in different settings. Background:: Adequate pain management is closely related to the degree of knowledge about pain of the healthcare personnel. Therefore, pedagogical programs on pain have been implemented in diverse health setting. However, several studies have found significant deficiencies in the knowledge of pain in health professionals, including nurses.Design:: Systematic review and meta-analysis. The study protocol was developed, registered and published in the international prospective register of systematic reviews (PROSPERO).Data sources:: Scopus, PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, Cochrane Library and Google Scholar databases were searched up to June 2021. Studies from 2010 to 2021 were included in the analysis. Methods:: This study was conducted according to the Report Article for Systematic Reviews and Meta-analysis (PRISMA) guidelines and the quality evaluation was realized by the Mix Methods Appraisal Tool (MMAT). A random effects model analyzed the data, due on the heterogeneity among the studies. The I2 index and Cochran's Q test were employed to inspect the heterogeneity between the studies. For the Cochran's Q test, the P-value was set at 0.05.Results:: Eighteen studies with 7942 nurses were included in the systematic review and meta-analysis. The percentage of total pain knowledge was 52.9 % (95 % CI: 47.2-58.6). The highest and the lowest knowledge scores were for the spiritual/cultural dimension (69.9 %, 95 % CI: 63.4-76.0) and the intervention dimension (36.8 %, 95 % CI: 28.1-45.9), respectively. The score of total knowledge of the six domains in nurses in the area of oncology (58.6 %, 95 % CI: 45.3-71.2) was higher than that of nurses of the other areas.Conclusions:: The knowledge of the nursing professionals about pain was lower that the suggested level of 80 %. Our study found that the pain knowledge is positively related to the prior pain training. Therefore, there is an urgent need to include continuing educational initiatives to improve the knowledge level about pain management in all the health personnel, including the nursing professionals.