Morphine is a drug that is used to treat severe or long term pain. Morphine too is the most commonly used type of drug when it comes to pain management. Despite the fact that morphine usage is high there still are myths and misconceptions about morphine that make patients refrain from its usage.
KEHPCA in conjunction with A.I.C Kijabe conducted training on pain management and the health practitioners from different sections of the hospital were educated on pain relief and ensuring that those who are in pain get quality life. “Morphine is a very effective and safe drug when it comes to pain management. When administered appropriately then it doesn’t even have any major side effects,” says Gladys one of the officials conducting the training. “We are working on reducing the phobia the health practitioners have on morphine. It will take a while but by the numbers in the last couple of years, the phobia of it has reduced,” she adds.
One of the doctors in A.I.C Kijabe embraces the phrase ‘once beaten twice shy’. He shares about his own personal experience when he suffered from excruciating pain and what he went through. He says this experience has resulted in making him react as quickly as possible to any matter pertaining pain. ‘We do not need to go to these extents to understand our patients’ narrates the doctor. ‘These palliative care trainings help us understand our patients better’, he added. With the numbers in for training, he says that KEHPCA and A.I.C Kijabe had done a really good job in ensuring that the health practitioners were given the necessary skills in pain management.
With the awareness created in the training and confidence put to the health practitioners, chances are even higher that the phobia of morphine in Kijabe area will decrease and more people will be relieved off the pain in the area. The health practitioners who are in daily contact with the people of the community will be able to pass this knowledge to the community and thus will be able to take much greater care of the patients.
The training had a pre-test on pain management and the average score was 59% with a major improvement in the post-test of 78%.