Postoperative pain management is integral not only to the procedure itself, but also to the patient’s preoperative counseling and education; to their length of stay; to their satisfaction; and ultimately to their recovery and long-term well-being. And yet, for all its ubiquity, postoperative pain management can be difficult to standardize and implement effectively, especially because every patient is different.

Despite the increased focus on pain management programs in the era of the opioid epidemic, and despite the development of new standards for pain management, many patients experience intense pain after surgery. Additional efforts are still required to improve patients’ postoperative pain experience.¹

As part of those additional efforts, many organizations have created pain management guidelines:

• The American Pain Society: “Management of Postoperative Pain: A Clinical Practice Guideline From the American Pain Society, the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, and the American Society of Anesthesiologists’ Committee on Regional Anesthesia, Executive Committee, and Administrative Council” (2016)

• The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation: “Multimodal Analgesia And Alternatives To Opioids For Postoperative Analgesia” (2018)

• The Nurse Practitioner Healthcare Foundation. “Managing Chronic Pain with Opioids: A Call for Change, 2017” (2017)

• Anesthesiology: “Practice Guidelines for Acute Pain Management in the Perioperative Setting: An Updated Report by the American Society of Anesthesiologists Task Force on Acute Pain Management” (2012)

• Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine: “Consensus Guidelines on the Use of Intravenous Ketamine Infusions for Acute Pain Management From the American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine, the American Academy of Pain Medicine, and the American Society of Anesthesiologists” (2018)

• Society of Hospital Medicine: “The Society of Hospital Medicine’s (SHM’s) Multimodal Pain Strategies Guide for Postoperative Pain Management” (2017)

• American College of Surgeons: Optimal Perioperative Management of the Geriatric Patient: Best Practices Guideline from ACS NSQIP®/American Geriatrics Society (2016)