Identifying Chronic Pain among Residents of Darulaceze Nursing Home: Preliminary Findings from Turkey's Established Institution
IHC 2023 International Headache Congress, Seoul, Güney Kore, 14 - 15 Eylül 2023, ss.156, (Özet Bildiri)
- Yayın Türü: Bildiri / Özet Bildiri
- Doi Numarası: 10.1177/03331024231189112
- Basıldığı Şehir: Seoul
- Basıldığı Ülke: Güney Kore
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.156
- İstanbul Üniversitesi-Cerrahpaşa Adresli: Evet
Özet
Objective: This study aimed to assess the status of employees with chronic painful conditions at Darulaceze, the first established nursing home in Turkey.
Methods: Research guidelines and forms were developed under the institutional cooperation protocol. Gerontology students, trained by the Global Migraine and Pain Association, aided in online data collection using the Google Forms application. A total of 247 participants took part in the study. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze the data, and chi-square analysis was conducted to examine intergroup relationships. Results: Among the 247 individuals employed at Daru¨laceze, 71.7% were aged 31–50, and 55.3% were male. The prevalent chronic health problems reported by the workers were headaches (59.9%) and low back and neck pain (14.9%). Lifetime headache frequency was 90.7%, and current ongoing headache frequency was 44.1%. A statistically significant relationship was found between age and the occurrence of headaches during one’s lifetime (p ¼ 0.032 < 0.05). Additionally, a statistically significant relationship was found between gender and experiencing headaches within the last three months (p ¼ 0.001 < 0.05), with 97% of females and 85% of males reporting headaches. Furthermore, employees reported that headaches negatively affected work performance and disrupted daily activities for 19% of the participants. Pain medication was required by 47% of employees due to pain within the past month. Overall, recurrent body pain was reported by 39.3% of employees, with higher prevalence observed among women (p ¼ 0.00 < 0.01). Of these cases, 21.1% were moderate, and 9.3% were severe. The primary cause of pain, as reported by employees, was a lack of physical activity or exercise (10.12%). Conclusion: Chronic pain and its ineffective management processes significantly impact the productivity and wellbeing of employees in elderly care centers. This study provides the first evaluation of painful conditions among nursing home workers in Turkey. Detailed analysis of various factors such as pain causes, headache frequency, and age and gender differences is believed to contribute to alleviating the burden of care.