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Pain Management and Telehealth for Crow Indians

Karen Zulkowski, DNS, RN, CWS Principal Investigator Montana State University-Bozeman College of Nursing Billings Campus karenz@montana.edu

| Team | Dissemination |

Overview:

Purpose:  People's response to pain is influenced by their past experience with pain, the duration and intensity of the pain, and their culture.  Culture is an important consideration in the Native American population. Current pain assessment instruments do not take the Native American culture and language barriers into consideration. Adequate pain management and alternative methods of health care delivery in the Native American population has not been well researched.  Telehealth is currently being used to bring specialized health care to underserved Americans throughout the United States.  Little research is available on the use of telehealth with the Native American population.  Even less is available on the pain experience in Native American Crow population.

Aims:  The specific aims of this study were to:  (a) determine adaptability of the Brief Pain Inventory for use with a Native American Crow population, and (b) determine the feasibility of nursing management of chronic pain using telehealth technology with a Native American Crow population.

Methods:  The Brief Pain Inventory was adapted into culturally sensitive English.  This translation was refined and preliminary testing was conducted.  Expert-patient agreement was established and intra-item correlations was performed.  There were 10 Crow patients with complaints of pain over 3 months in duration.  Each participant had one face-to-face consultation with the Advanced Practice Nurse pain expert.  There were three consultations over telehealth.  Telehealth will be considered an acceptable mechanism of pain management delivery if Crow participant pain scores decrease over the course of the study and they rate their experience as useful on the Acceptance of Telehealth Questionnaire.  Results of this study provided the basis for tool development and alternative methods of health care delivery in a medically underserved Crow population.

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Team:

Jeannine Brant, MS, RN, AOCN Co-Investigator Saint Vincent Hospital and Health Center jeannine.brant@svh-mt.org

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Dissemination:

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