UMSON researcher awarded grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging to address the treatment of pain in nursing home residents with dementia.
Barbara Resnick, PhD ’96, RN, CRNP, FAAN, FAANP, professor, Sonya Ziporkin Gershowitz Chair in Gerontology, and associate dean for research at the University of Maryland School of Nursing (UMSON), has been awarded a five-year, $2.13 million grant from the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute on Aging to address the treatment of pain in nursing home residents with dementia. The focus of this work is how to implement use in nursing homes of the recently revised Pain Management Clinical Practice Guideline from AMDA — The Society of Post Acute and Long-Term Care.
Findings from the study, “Testing the Pain Management Clinical Practice Guideline (Pain Management CPG)-Evidence Integration Triangle (EIT),” will explore how best to improve the way in which pain is assessed, diagnosed, and managed among older adults living with dementia in nursing homes and to improve the health equity of aging populations experiencing pain.
“This research is critically important from two perspectives,” said Resnick, who also has been recognized as a University of Maryland, Baltimore Distinguished University Professor. “First, the diagnosis and management of pain is a major issue for older adults living with dementia in nursing homes. The new clinical practice guideline for pain management developed by a team of us from the Society of Post-Acute and Long-Term Care Medicine serves as a wonderful resource to help improve the diagnosis and management of pain, but only if it is implemented. Therefore, the second focus of this work is on demonstrating the efficacy of our approach for implementation of the guideline to change how staff diagnose and manage pain in nursing homes.”