Innovation
The iPhone Pain Assessment application and dementia carers web site
What prompted innovation?
There is what has been described as an ageing time bomb or a crisis facing our health and social care systems. The population around the world is ageing; in fact, we are about to see the over-80 age group triple and our younger age group decrease. As a result, the potential care workforce for this group will be significantly smaller than we have had in the past. With our increasing ageing population and as people are living longer, we are likely to see more people with dementia and as such, there may be an increased likelihood that these adults will be unable to articulate their pain.
In 2007, the British Pain Society and British Geriatric Society published their guidelines on the assessment of pain. This was a comprehensive guide to the methods of assessment and the tools available. In an attempt to incorporate the pain assessment guidelines into a format that would be easily accessible to all health care professionals and informal carers we have developed the pain APP and the dementia carers website. The pain APP provides a simple pathway to pain assessment and management which can be followed by health care staff and the dementia carers web site provides on line training for informal carers to help them to understand pain.
What makes innovation different?
Both devices are easy to use and accessible for staff and informal carers to enable simple pain assessment to be performed on those unable to communicate their pain.
Changes in practice
The APP has been tested in the field of pre-hospital care and there has been a 1/3 improvement in the identification and management of pain in adults with dementia, over 92 incidencies.
Impact
Evidence from South East Coast Ambulance staff who have evaluated the application.
Dissemination
As above