The patients are generally assessed for efficacy of the pain relieving technique being used, side-effects, need for adjunctive medications, level of sedation, and patient satisfaction. The service provides 24 hour coverage with an Anesthesiology resident or Pain Management fellow and an attending faculty member on-call who is available for consultations, questions, or problems. Information for Patients Effective pain relief is an important part of your treatment while you are in the hospital. There are ways to treat or control pain that can help to make you more comfortable while you are healing and getting over your operation. Although it may not be possible to relieve all of your pain, you should be comfortable enough so that you can rest, cough, exercise and sleep.
Some operations cause more pain than others, and each person responds in a different way.
Your doctor will talk with you about what is best for you. The IV medicine can be given to you by your nurse or you may have a pump that lets you have some control over when you take the medicine. After you are eating and drinking you can take pain pills. This is very rare unless you already have a problem with drugs. You do need to tell the doctors and nurses about any medicine you have been taking for pain or other reasons.