This order is an examination of a nursing problem today which might lead to a later research project. The topic chosen for this project is the concept of an alternative method for pain management. Guided Imagery is where nursing staff helps patients' visualize changes in their body that might help to ease or reduce pain. With a stronger alternative to combat a reliance on pharmaceutical medications, guided imagery could have great potential in current practice.
Evidence-Based Research Problem in Nursing
Guided Imagery and Pain Management
Everyone experiences pain at some point. From the patient in the most dire circumstances in urgent care to the little kid with a sprained ankle. Pain is universal. Yet, it continues to plague individuals all over the world.
Pain Management and the post-surgery healing processes are a difficult area to study based on the personal nature of how each individual patient deals with and visualizes their own pain and recovery. Still, nursing researchers and practitioners are constantly looking for methods to improve or augment current pain management practices within contemporary nursing practice. In more contemporary pain management strategies, there is often a tendency to over rely on pharmaceutical medications. Pain is experienced by patients of all sorts. Anything from injuries to degenerative diseases can cause chronic pain that continues to plague the patient in question (Bresler, 2012). Using guided imagery can possibly help increase individual pain tolerances, and thus it is a better solution for pain management rather than trying to combat all the causes for the plethora of pain that is witnessed in clinical practice on a daily basis. Increasing pain tolerance and the ability for the individual to manage pain during treatment and recovery can transcend differences to why the pain is even an issue at all. Thus, it becomes a more universal method for helping individuals deal with pains of all sorts.
Understanding how to better manage pain can help individuals suffering from a wide variety of injuries and conditions. Further research on alternative methods for pain reduction and management techniques may be able to give some much needed relief to a mass of individuals, not just a handful of patients (Bresler, 2012). Pain can not only harm individuals with the injury, it can cause harm to everyone around them (Bresler, 2012).No one wants to see their loved ones suffer. Also, patients themselves may damage their own personal relationships because of the extremity of pain and how it can isolate an individual (Bresler, 2012).
To best understand how to structure an investigation into how to combat pain, one should look to use a PICO format. The concept of PICO revolves around the elements of patient/population, intervention/issue, comparison, and outcome (Davies, 2011). First, the patient and problems regard pain management in individuals having to experience traumatic injuries and surgeries. As they have to endure serious pain during their recovery, there are issues as to how to best manage pain in individuals who are trying to recover with serious trauma to their bodies. The main intervention here is guided imagery, which is "the practice of concentrating on a mental picture to promote healing and relaxation or other positive outcomes" (Cornelius, 2010). It is the alternative method of coaching, where medical staff ask patients to picture particular health outcomes, like the movement of blood out of an area that is about to undergo surgery (Bresler, 2012). Studies have explored how it can be a helpful preparation tool for individuals undergoing invasive surgeries. Essentially, "guided imagery could be used to raise pain tolerance, facilitate restful sleep, elevate mood, increase motivation, reduce dependence, and promote self-management" (Bresler, 2012). Still, the concept of guided imagery tends to stray far from traditional methods of pain management. Pharmaceuticals have long been a major method of treatment for pain, but have resulted in major backlashes in regards to patients becoming addicted, especially in long-term and chronic cases of pain. If guided imagery could be a successful method, it may reduce pain or increase pain tolerance, without the threat of chemical dependence.
There are a number of benefits which are seen in the ongoing discourse today. As such, the expected improvements include things like drops in blood high blood pressure, lower heart rates, and reduction of chronic pain symptoms, lessoning of headache pain, and increasing overall pain tolerance (Cornelius, 2010). In situations were patients going into a major surgery were coached with guided imagery, it was "shown to decrease stress and anxiety before and after surgery," thus helping reduce additional pain issues during the crucial stages of recovery directly after an invasive surgery (Cornelius, 2010). It is a natural and holistic way to approach pain management. It eventually aims "to increase the ability to self-manage pain, and decrease dependence upon medications and medical care" (Bresler, 2012). This may mean increasing an individual's pain tolerance in order to increase their quality of life as they recover.
The previous discussion highlights a clear problem that could possibly be addressed with the proposed method of guided imagery within clinical practice. However, if there is a relationship between the variables here, it will be difficult to discern based on the abstract nature of the data that would be needed. As such, the research questions that drive this research must be well tailored in order to secure a more directed path for the overall research process. The questions for this current research are as follows:
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