Development of Clinical Nursing Practice Guidelines for Pain Management in Normal Labor

Abstract

This research and development study aimed to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of clinical nursing practice guidelines for pain management in laboring mothers. The study was conducted in three phases: 1) development of the clinical nursing practice guidelines, 2) implementation of the guidelines, and 3) evaluation and dissemination of the guidelines. Participants were selected through purposive sampling and consisted of ten professional nurses working in the labor and delivery unit and forty-two mothers undergoing normal labor. The research instruments included the developed clinical nursing practice guidelines, a pain assessment tool, a maternal satisfaction questionnaire, and a feasibility assessment for guideline implementation. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the paired t-test.

            The findings revealed that the developed clinical nursing practice guidelines comprised two principal components: 1) non-pharmacological nursing interventions, and 2) pharmacological nursing interventions. Following implementation of the guidelines, maternal pain levels decreased significantly across all stages of labor (p < 0.001). Overall satisfaction improved from a moderate level to a high level (p < 0.001), and the rate of analgesic medication use declined from 38.1% to 16.7%. These results demonstrate that the clinical nursing practice guidelines are effective in managing pain among mothers undergoing normal labor, and that other labor and delivery units may feasibly adopt and apply these guidelines within their own clinical contexts.