PATIENT AND NURSE EVALUATION OF PATIENT-CONTROLLED ANALGESIA DELIVERY SYSTEMS FOR POSTOPERATIVE PAIN MANAGEMENT

Five different patient-controlled analgesia (PCA) delivery systems were evaluated for the treatment of acute postoperative pain in 423 patients undergoing elective operations at a large tertiary care hospital. The PCA trial was conducted on four different postsurgical wards over a 5-mo period. All five devices were utilized on each ward for a 1-mo period. According to the nurses, the mean time (+/- SD) required to become comfortable using the Pharmacia Deltec CADD-PCA was significantly longer (50 +/- 3 7 min) than that using the Abbott Lifecare Plus (19 +/- 17 min), Bard PCA I (17 +/- 14 min), IVAC PCA (17 +/- 14 min), or Baxter PCA Infusor (7 +/- 8 min). With respect to ease of documentation by the nursing staff, the Baxter device was superior to the Pharmacia device. Similarly, mechanical problems were less frequent with the Baxter (6 %) compared with the Pharmacia device (71 %). The patients felt that the nurses were more comfortable using the Baxter device than the Pharmacia device. The patients also found the Baxter device easier to use, especially at night, and the kast likely to interfere with ambulation. In conclusion, 80 % of the nurses at this teaching center preferred the Baxter PCA Infusor over four widely used electronic PCA devices for the management of acute postoperative pain. The Pharmacia device was felt by the nurses to be less user friendly than the other programmable PCA devices used in this trial. Of the electronic devices we studied, the Bard and IVAC devices were the most cost-effective.