Acute Pain at Royal Derby Hospital

The Acute Pain team provides a support service to medical and nursing staff, dealing with primarily surgical patients who are experiencing pain related to an operation or injury.

The team is made up of four specialist pain nurses with two consultant anaesthetists.

All patients experiencing pain should have routine painkillers prescribed by their ward doctors. The Acute Pain team is on hand to assist in more complex cases such as patients who are unable to take some of the normal pain medications prescribed, patients already on pain medication for chronic pain, or patients whose pain is not sufficiently controlled by the pain medication they have been prescribed.

All patients undergoing an operation will have painkillers appropriate to their procedure prescribed either by the surgical team or the anaesthetist. Some of these medications will be given regularly and others are prescribed “as needed” so patients can ask for additional pain relief if the regular medication is not enough.

Some discomfort is normal after an operation – the objective of pain medication is to enable patients to mobilise sufficiently to do their daily self-care tasks.


Acute pain management

If you are having an operation at Royal Derby Hospital, please watch the video below which explains further how your pain will be managed and what you can do to ensure your pain relief is effective and that pain does not limit your recovery time.