RESIDENTS’ KNOWLEDGE AND ATTITUDES TOWARD THE USE OF ANALGESICS FOR PAIN MANAGEMENT: A SURVEY IN A TERTIARY LEVEL UNIVERSITY HOSPITAL IN NEPAL

Background Pain is still being ignored which has lead to mismanagement in pain treatment in the developing countries. One of the barriers in adequate pain management is lack of adequate knowledge among health personnel including residents who are one of the important personnel that can make difference in pain management as they prescribe analgesics particularly opioids to the patients. Objectives The objective of the study was to find out the attitude and knowledge toward the use of analgesics for pain management in residents. Methods 90 residents distributed in different departments of Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital who prescribe analgesics mainly opioids in the postoperative ward were involved in this study. The data was collected through distribution of self administered questionnaire. Data was entered in Excel and analyzed in SPSS version 21. Results The present study revealed that residents obtained less knowledge and attitude score about pain management, the mean score being 3.6 (3±1.55) out of 9 for knowledge and 25.79 (±4.27) out of 40 for attitude. In our study, attitude and knowledge score of anesthesiology residents were higher than other residents, which was statistically significant. With higher year of residency and past training in pain there was an increment in knowledge but not in attitude.