Relieve pain and improve well-being. This is the result of the first year of work of the three good practice guides implemented in the health zone of the province of Cuenca. Begoña Fernández, Beatriz Cervera and María Teresa Huélamo are responsible for its development.

Cuenca is, along with Guadalajara, the two candidates who opt for the certificate of Center Committed to Excellence in Care, a request that has been requested by five directorates in the region. This is an international project of Canadian origin that began in 2003. This initiative arrived in Spain in 2012.

The results so far have been “satisfactory,” as Fernández puts it. Currently, three practices are underway, including a patient pain management action, which has begun to be applied on all floors of the Virgen de la Luz Hospital, except pediatrics; a tobacco detection and eradication program, active in twelve health centers, and another to support adults waiting for or living with an ostomy.

The goal of all three guidelines is to improve the patient’s quality of life through fully personalized care. This is what Begoña Fernández, director of Continuity of Assistance and Care, tells us. “In all the guides, one of the objectives is to carry out interventions through individualized plans. It’s a patient-centered model of care,” he says.

This new treatment methodology appeals not only to patients, but also to the professionals who put it into practice. This reaction was a pleasant surprise for those responsible for its introduction into the health field. “When these guidelines started to be implemented, when we thought about it, we thought that because it required a lot of effort, there would be a high level of dropout. On the contrary, they express their satisfaction with this methodical and standardized work,” explains Fernández. In this way, the healthcare team demonstrates its commitment to excellence in care and believes that, in a certain way, “they are part of an important and positive project,” explains Cervera.

At the same time, this new way of caring for patients establishes a routine in areas that previously depended on the will of the professional. The program also affects knowledge generation.

The results, in turn, allow us to know in which areas practices should be improved and to create more scientific evidence, as Fernández details. “Working with this scientific evidence contributes to greater excellence in the assistance and care provided by management,” says the director of continuity of assistance and care.

Pain intensity in patients decreased from 6.5 percent to 2.5 percent in nine months

Good practices and the manual dedicated to pain reduction are already showing their first results. After nine months of operation, patients’ pain intensity was significantly reduced from 6.5% to 2.5%. These figures are the result of the work of the healthcare team in the trauma wing, where this best practice guide was implemented for the first time. The catalog doesn’t just establish ways to measure disease. This also includes completely individualized attention. “You have the power to decide your own pain, that is, how you want to manage it,” Cervera emphasizes.

Thus, the quality of patients’ stay improves. During this process, a specific care plan is developed for each of them. This is designed according to the characteristics of the pain, the situation and the pathology. Likewise, during these practices, members of the patient’s family are taken into account. According to Cervera, this in turn influences the quality of treatment. “There is evidence that pain prolongs hospital stay. If it decreases, it decreases,” he emphasizes. This project includes validated pain scales for people who do not have the ability to express it.

OTHER INITIATIVES

The other two guides focus on tobacco control, and on patients who are going to have or have already had an ostomy. The first began in 2022 in three health centers in the province. Currently, almost 50 percent of professionals apply the guidelines in this manual. The second program focuses on supporting the ostomy patient before but also after. In turn, this patient receives a series of recommendations to have an optimal quality of life after the operation.