QI Resources and Tools

There are many factors that make pain assessment and management in the long-term care setting challenging.  Use these resources to help you meet your facility's quality improvement goals.

Institutional Commitment to Pain Management - This document acknowledges the many factors that make pain assessment and management in the long-term care setting challenging.  It details The Wisconsin Cancer Pain Initiative that has developed a process that can guide an organization through the development of a pain management program. 

Pain: Facility Assessment Checklists - A series of self-assessment checklists for nursing home staff to use to assess processes related to pain management in the facility and to identify areas that need improvement.  These checklists are meant to help start a Quality Improvement project and focus on patient assessment and treatment so that they can be used in conjunction with the Pain Audit Checklists and Pain Data Tracking Tool.

Pain Audit Checklists - These checklists can be used to audit the charts to determine whether staff are in compliance with the six recommended Pain QI Question.

Pain Data Tracking Tool - A form used to track pain data.  Includes worksheets, data entry form, QI changes worksheet and graphs.

Random Sample Strategy - To evaluate performance on quality measures, it isn't necessary to have a random sample that reflects an unbiased selection of older adults.  This outline provides one of many possible approaches for drawing a random sample for the purpose of auditing.