Is the symptom of pain adequately addressed in hospitalization at Internal Medicine? Crosssectional study

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES : Pain is one of the main reasons for seeking medical care. Thus, the objective of the pre-sent study was to evaluate the treatment of pain complaints in a medical clinic ward. METHODS : Cross-sectional and descriptive study at the Santa Lu-cinda Hospital ( Hospital Santa Lucinda - HSL) and Sorocaba Hospital Complex ( Conjunto Hospitalar de Sorocaba - CHS). Data was collected by: (1) interviewing the participants using a structured questionnaire drawn up by the researchers, and (2) accessing information such as pain records and drug prescriptions in the medical records. RESULTS : The sample consisted of 85 patients, 11.8% in the HSL and 88.2% in the CHS. More than 80% of patients had already experienced pain at some point in their lives, whether chronic or acute. Forty-one percent of patients had pain during hospitalization, regardless of the reason for admission. A minority of pain events had the complaint recorded in their medical records. Drugs were prescribed for 73.0% of the patients, mostly on demand. There was a mismatch between the type of drug prescribed and the intensity of the pain in 80% of prescriptions. CONCLUSION : The complaint of pain is prevalent in Internal Medicine hospitalizations. In this study, 41.2% of the pain was musculoskeletal, followed by abdominal pain, regardless of the reason for hospitalization. The complaint of pain was medicated in most of the patients’ pain reports, but around 23% of the pa-Is