NURSES' OCCUPATIONAL INTERGROUP BIAS, PATIENT'S OCCUPATIONAL GROUP MEMBERSHIP, AND NURSES' ASSESSMENT OF PAIN.
Contributors: Columbia University. Teachers College.
Published: 1987
Number of pages: 174
Subjects: Education, Health.; Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Quayhagen's model of pain aligning provided a framework for investigating and analyzing ways in which the patient's communication of pain to the nurse can result in actions taken by the nurse to help relieve the pain. Hornstein has shown that people preferentially help others who are identified as ingroup members. This study was an investigation of the relationship among nurses' occupational intergroup bias, a patient's occupational group membership, and nurses' assessment of the patient's pain.

A sample of 228 registered nurse graduate students from four New York metropolitan universities was selected. Subjects were tested in groups using three paper-and-pencil instruments. The pain assessment questionnaire, describing a patient who was labeled as either a (1) practical nurse, (2) school receptionist, (3) physical therapist, (4) kindergarten teacher, (5) physician, (6) college president, or (7) registered nurse, required subjects to provide a written assessment of the patient's problems. Seven-point semantic differential scales of 12 bipolar adjectives related to evaluation, potency, and activity required subjects to assess women in the seven selected occupations. A third form requested subjects to provide demographic data. One hundred thirty-five subjects responded to the pain assessment questionnaire, and 227 subjects responded to the semantic differential scales and demographic data form.

One-way analysis of variance yielded no significant relationship between nurses' assessment of pain and the patient's occupational group. Repeated measures analysis of variance followed by post hoc Scheffe tests found significant differences in nurses' responses to the occupational concepts. Registered nurses (along with kindergarten teachers) were rated higher in evaluation than the other occupations. Occupations were rated in potency as one would expect according to their social status. Multiple regression techniques found no significant relationship between semantic differential ratings of the concept registered nurse and the assessment of the patient labeled registered nurse in the pain assessment questionnaire.

Although nurses gave significantly different ratings to the occupational concepts investigated, these differences were not reflected in their assessments of a simulated patient, perhaps indicating an overriding norm to provide pain relief to all patients.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-01, Section: A, page: 0051.

Thesis (ED.D.)--COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY TEACHERS COLLEGE, 1987.

School code: 0055.