Practicing pain relief

Pioneering work helps hospitals assess and treat patients more comfortably

If you recall the harrowing hospital scene in the film “Terms of Endearment,” in which Shirley MacLaine screams repeatedly at nurses to give her dying daughter a painkiller, you’ll understand part of what drives Debra Gordon and her associates on the Pain Patient Care Team at UW Hospital and Clinics.

Gordon, a senior clinical nurse specialist, and her campus colleagues are dedicated to managing pain. They are one of the key reasons that scenes like that are now rare in American hospitals.

Last year, the national agency that accredits health-care organizations began requiring institutions to assess, document and treat every patient for pain. The standards used are based in large part on work by June Dahl, professor of pharmacology at the Medical School. Gordon and Dahl have fought to make sure pain care is not an afterthought but an integral part of taking care of patients.

Gordon’s pioneering work in helping hospitals assess and treat pain was recognized March 1 with the Clinical Practice Award from the American Society of Pain Management Nurses, a national organization of more than 1,500 nurses. The honor is given to nurses noted for improving the care of patients with pain.

Gordon grew up in Ashland, Wis., joined UW Hospital in 1983 as a staff nurse and moved into an advanced-practice nursing role in 1988. When the number of informal requests for pain-management consultations within the hospital began to grow, she proposed and developed a formal pain management consultation service in 1997. The service provides caregivers anywhere in the hospital with fast help on the best way to reduce patients’ pain. In just four years, the number of consultation requests has grown to more than 200 a year. And in February, Gordon and colleagues shared their expertise with health professionals at a three-day training program in Madison.