Quality of Postoperative Pain Management in Surgical Wards at Lagos University Teaching Hospital

Inadequate postoperative pain management impairs patient recovery, prolongs hospital stay, and increases the risk of chronic post-surgical pain, yet its quality in Nigerian tertiary hospitals has not been rigorously evaluated. This study assesses the quality of postoperative pain management in general and orthopaedic surgical wards at Lagos University Teaching Hospital, Lagos State. A prospective cross-sectional design is applied to 260 adult postoperative patients assessed at 6, 24, and 48 hours after surgery using the Numerical Rating Scale for pain intensity. Data include surgical procedure type, analgesic prescribed, route and timing of administration, adjuvant analgesic use, nursing reassessment frequency, and patient satisfaction with pain control. SPSS is used for descriptive and regression analysis. Available postoperative analgesia literature from South West Nigeria identifies under-prescription of opioids and reliance on single-agent parenteral diclofenac as the most common analgesia inadequacy patterns, with moderate to severe pain reported in over 45 percent of assessments at 24 hours. The WHO Pain Ladder and the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations pain management standards provide the normative framework. Findings will support the hospital's anaesthesia and pain management unit in developing and implementing a multimodal analgesia protocol with nursing-led pain reassessment standards. Keywords: postoperative pain management, analgesics, multimodal analgesia, Lagos, South West Nigeria.