Treatment of postoperative pain and non-pharmacologic practices in nursing systematic review: Results of Turkish doctoral dissertation in 2000-2015.

OBJECTIVES: This cross-sectional descriptive study aimed to identify and summarize non-pharmacologic practices used by nurses to reduce or relieve postoperative pain and the effect of such practices on pain and to criticize current evidence. METHODS: Research data were acquired by searching in the "Turkish National Database of Dissertations" in January 02 to January 31, 2016. The research sample included 13 doctoral dissertations conducted in 2000-2015 in Turkey that meet the research criteria. The dissertations included were manually evaluated for the year of registry in the database, disciplines, sample group, type and objective of the study, methods used for pain management, methods for pain assessment, and results of the study. RESULTS: Of the dissertations, 84.6% were conducted in adult patient population and approximately half of them were quasiexperimental/experimental studies. When the dissertations were searched by methods of pain control, 80% of dissertations were performed on non-pharmacologic methods. Among non-pharmacologic methods, massage and relaxation exercises were the most widely used methods at 18.6%. CONCLUSION: Non-pharmacologic pain management is an effective way to reduce pain severity and it can be independently used by nurses. Researchers of dissertations often choose non-pharmacologic practices that have no side effects, have minimum risk, are not detrimental to patients, are easy to administer, and are cost-efficient. Effective non-pharmacologic methods specific to groups by age, sex, and medical diagnosis should be identified by literature review for each non-pharmacologic method in future studies.