American Pain Society Recommendations for Improving the Quality of Acute and Cancer Pain Management

The American Pain Society (APS) set out to revise and expand its 1995 Quality Improvement Guidelines for the Treatment of Acute Pain and Cancer Pain and to facilitate improvements in the quality of pain management in all care settings.

Eleven multidisciplinary members of the APS with expertise in quality improvement or measurement participated in the update. Five experts from organizations that focus on health care quality reviewed the final recommendations. MEDLINE and Cumulative Index to Nursing and Allied Health Literature databases were searched (1994-2004) to identify articles on pain quality measurement and quality improvement published after the development of the 1995 guidelines. The APS task force revised and expanded recommendations on the basis of the systematic review of published studies. The more than 3000 members of the APS were invited to provide input, and the 5 experts provided additional comments. The task force synthesized reviewers' comments into the final set of recommendations.