Introduction:

Pain is one of the major symptoms experienced by hospitalized patients.

Objective:

To establish the hospital care quality indicators associated with pain management (prevalence, intensity, and interference) in adult inpatients, following the implementation of strategies framed within the pain-free Hospital Policy at a third-level institution.

Methodology:

Observational, descriptive, cross-sectional trial. Patients over 18 years of age, hospitalized for more than 24hours, and who previously signed their informed consent were included. The Brief Pain Inventory - Short Form in Spanish was adminis tered for pain evaluation, and the sex and service differences were estimated using the Wilcoxon test for quantitative variables and x2 for qualitative variables.

Results:

Three hundred thirty-eight participants were includ ed. The prevalence of pain was 43.4%, with a higher percentage among females (52.1% vs 28.8%, P <0.001) and in the surgical services (48.0% vs 37.5%, P = 0.05). Women showed higher intensity in the "minimum pain" item (median 3 interquartile range 2-5 vs median 2 interquartile range 0-1, P=0.009). The activities with the highest interference were sleep and general activity in both sexes and services.

Discussion:

The hospital quality of care indicators herein measured allow for an enhanced approach to characterize pain in this population group, with a view to improving pain identifica tion and management in the future to provide a more comfortable experience for the patient.

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