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In a prospective study at an emergency department in Australia, researchers evaluated the effect on time to analgesia of requiring triage nurses to record a numeric pain score in the electronic medical record for all patients and, separately, of a focused educational program for staff (1-hour didactic presentation on the need to improve time to analgesia).
During the 8 weeks before the scoring intervention, pain scores were recorded for 73% of patients; median time from patient arrival to administration of analgesia was 123 minutes. Eight weeks after the intervention, scores were recorded for 93% of patients (exceptions were critically ill patients who bypassed usual triage), and median time to analgesia decreased to 95 minutes. At 1 year, m…