Pain Management in Older Adults ― A Nursing Perspective

This book addresses relevant issues to enhance pain management nurses need to advocate for effective pain treatment in the elderly. Significant changes in the evolving nursing and healthcare environment require adequate information on this topic, as pain is a very challenging area. As other care professionals, nurses are daily confronted with issues on pain assessment and management. This volume offers an overview within an evolving health environment, in which nurses dealing with pain play a growing role. 

It showcases best practices in pain assessment and management, details non pharmacological and pharmacological treatments. It also addresses core issues defined by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), such as knowledge translation, that are most relevant for clinical nurses, student nurses, nurse researchers as well as other care professionals.

Gisele Pickering is Professor of Medicine and Clinical Pharmacologist at the University Hospital of Clermont-Ferrand, France. She is a permanent member of the Inserm Neurodol 1107 and CIC 1405 research groups on Fundamental and Clinical Pain, where her main topics of research concern the mechanism of action of analgesics, the impact of pain on cognitive processes and pain management in older persons. She belongs to the International Special Interest Group of Pain in older persons (IASP) and participated to the European COST program on pain in cognitively impaired persons. She is a member of the DoloplusR group that validated several behavioural scales (DoloplusR, AlgoplusR), and of the MobiqualR French project on pain education in nursing homes. She regularly contributes to peer-reviewed publications on Pharmacology and Pain, international meetings, and belongs to national and international Pain, Pharmacology and Geriatrics Societies.

Sandra Zwakhalen, RN, PhD is an Associate Professor with the Department of Health Services Research at Maastricht University in the Netherlands. She is a health scientist, originally trained as a nurse and her main research topic is: geriatric nursing care with a particular focus on pain assessment and management. She is one of the two coordinators of the Living Lab for Care of Older People. She serves as a board member at the European Academy of Nursing.

Sharon Kaasalainen, RN, PhD is an Associate Professor with the School of Nursing and is an Associate member of the Department of Family Medicine at McMaster University, in the US. Her research program is focused on improving the quality of life for people living in Long Term Care (LTC) homes with a particular focus on pain management and palliative care using participatory action research methods. Other areas of interest include optimizing the role of nurse practitioners in LTC, specifically related to pain management.