Opioid-Induced Sedation and Respiratory Depression: Are Sedation Scales Enough to Prevent Adverse Drug Events Postoperatively?

Abstract

Objectives: Nurses who care for hospitalized patients are responsible for ensuring adequate pain management is provided in a safe manner. The clinical challenge is balancing the effective control of the patient's pain with the side effects of administering opioids. The aim of this literature review is to explore the evidence on how nurses assess for opioid-induced sedation and advancing respiratory depression and how they integrate those data in their critical thinking skills when deciding to administer opioids for pain.

Design: A matrix method was used to guide the review and synthesis of the evidence. Tables with column headings (citation, purpose of study, design/measurements, outcomes, and results) were constructed to record data extracted from each study.

Data sources: Primary source research articles were examined using the MESH terms sedation, sedation scale, respiratory depression, opioid, pain, pain assessment, adverse events, naloxone and postoperative.

Review/analysis methods: Original studies such as retrospective case-control studies and descriptive studies were included. The final studies that met the inclusion criteria and were independently reviewed by the authors. The two main areas of interest were the evidence for how nurses assess for advancing sedation and excessive respiratory depression and how nurses integrate their assessment data in their critical thinking skills when deciding to administer opioids for pain.

Results: Results indicated a lack of evidence examining the relationships among sedation, respiratory depression, and adverse events and the overall impact of managing these variables on patients' pain.

Conclusions: This review revealed a lack of evidence between how nurses assess for opioid induced advancing sedation and excessive respiratory depression, and the impact, including the adverse events associate with acute pain management.