Abstract

Pain is almost always present in critically ill people and its management represents a huge challenge for health professionals, who sometimes underestimate pain in critically ill patients, probably due to a lack of awareness or an adequate scale. However, it must be ensured that the critically ill patient has the right to pain management, thus fulfilling a professional duty and ensuring the effective humanization of care. Objective: To identify the impact of nurses’ intervention on pain assessment in critically ill patients sedated and on mechanical ventilation. Methods: Integrative review, based on indexed material, having consulted the Ebsco search engine, with access to five electronic databases: Cinahl, Nursing & Allied Health Collection, Cochrane Plus Collection, MedicLatina and Medline, in the time horizon 2017 to 2022. Results: The data contribute to the understanding that, when the user is ventilated, it is possible to perceive pain in order to act in the best possible way, developing scales. It is necessary to provide health professionals with scientific, technical and relational skills, encouraging the assessment and recording of a major vital sign, which is pain. The results presented here are the result of a search for updated articles and studies on scales applied to critically ill patients, carried out at an international level.

Keywords

critical care, respiration, artificial, pain, nursing