Background and Aims: Pain underestimation done by health professionals is one of the main causes of insufficient pain management. Nurses who spend the largest amount of time at the bedside are the key factors for preventing pain underestimation, while nursing students having an important role for the prevention of the continued pain underestimation tendency among nurses. Therefore, the study aimed to measure the effectiveness of a structured pain management education on preventing pain underestimation behavior among nursing students.

Methods: This randomized controlled experimental study with a pretest-posttest design included 70 nursing students. The experiment group received the structured pain management education of 4-hours and both groups assessed 4-video simulations of pain. The students were allocated to the groups randomly by simple stratified sampling to avoid bias and to ensure a balanced distribution between the groups regarding the year of study.

Results: The education and control groups were similar regarding characteristics. The groups both underestimated the pain at various levels. There was no significant difference between the groups for Video 1 and 2. The education group less underestimated the video 4 however, more underestimated the Video 3. 

Conclusions: The results demonstrate that 4-hours of structured pain management education did not have a significant impact on pain estimation among nursing students. Behavioral changes in practice might be achieved by longer and repetitive training sessions. It can be said that social interaction with patients is a key component in pain estimation. These results emphasize the importance social interaction with patients in pain estimation and therefore, it can be said that pain education programs should include the psychosocial perspective of pain assessment. Besides, pain management should be a part of each and every subject that may involve patients’ pain throughout nursing education rather than including a separate subject of pain management.

THE ROLE OF STRUCTURED PAIN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION TO PREVENT PAIN UNDERESTIMATION AMONG NURSING STUDENTS