Health Services > Princess Alexandra Hospital

Acute Pain Service

Contact
Telephone: (07) 3176 5547 Facsimile: (07) 3176 5102
Location
Level 2, Building 1 Orange Lifts (Anaesthetics Department) Location and Maps >>

Princess Alexandra Hospital's Acute Pain Service (APS) is responsible for providing safe and effective acute pain management by:

managing all public patients with epidural, regional or patient controlled analgesia or continuous analgesic infusions in collaboration with the primary care team, intermediate patients referred to the APS and other referrals from the primary care team for review of patients with acute pain
developing evidenced based education programs for nursing, medical and allied health staff
developing policies and procedures for analgesic therapy
collecting and analysing APS data to ensure the quality and safety of patient care
maintaining organisational currency in acute pain management and specialised techniques such as epidural and patient controlled analgesia

To achieve this the APS:

facilitates inter-customer links to optimise acute pain management and reduce the incidence of post-operative complications
maintains a cost effect plan for the provision and maintenance of Acute Pain Service resources
maintains currency and ease of access to resource and teaching material on acute pain management techniques and drugs.
revises and updates acute pain management procedures and teaching tools to reflect evidence based practice
maintains and supports the role of the ward Pain Resource Nurse
manages succession planning
manages and utilizes an APS database for audits and research
maintains PAH as a centre of excellence and the resource for acute pain management