Barriers to cancer pain management: Jordanian nurses' perspectives

Background: Adequate management of cancer pain is a human right. However, cancer pain is still not well medicated, and some of the barriers to achieving relief are related to nursing. Identifying these barriers would help the development of interventions to improve pain management. Aim: To explore barriers to cancer pain management among Jordanian nurses. Method: A convenience sample of 96 nurses from 3 hospitals participated in a cross-sectional survey using an Arabic translation of Ward and colleagues' barriers questionnaire II. Results: The nurses expressed high levels of barriers on the questionnaire, with a mean score of 2.5 for the questionnaire as a whole (standard deviation (SD) 0.8). The harmful and physiological effects of medications subscales received the highest mean scores: 2.7 (SD 1.1) and 2.6 (SD 0.9) respectively. Conclusions: Many nursing-related barriers to cancer pain management were found. These barriers need to be addressed and eliminated, for example through education and training.