Introduction:

Appropriate pain control is a crucial and necessary challenge to address in the surgical field, since it would produce a great impact patient recovery.

Objective:

To assess the effect of a nursing intervention applied during the perioperative period for pain control in the adult patient in the immediate postoperative period.

Methods:

Quantitative and quasiexperimental study carried out with two groups, an experimental and a control group, of adults operated on in the surgical room of a health institution in Bucaramanga, Colombia, in the first semester of 2017. The universe consisted of 3240 patients, while the calculated sample was 120. The intervention consisted in three phases, framed within the theory of unpleasant symptoms. The visual analog scale was used to assess pain. Descriptive, bivariate and multiple analyses were performed. Betas were calculated with linear regression models and using the scores of the pain scale at ten to twenty and thirty minutes; as well as at one to one and half hours, and two hours.

Results:

The groups presented similar characteristics: in the experimental group, the scores of the pain scale decreased at ten minutes by 0.98 (95 % CI: -2.0; 0.02); at one hour, by 0.77 (95 % CI: -1.60; 0.05; at one and a half hours, by 0.71 (95 % CI: -1.13; -0.12); and at two hours, by 0.60 (95 % CI: -1.09; -0.10).

Conclusions:

The nursing intervention in the perioperative period, beyond the administration of analgesics, is fundamental to modify responses, as referred by Swanson's theory, unpleasant symptoms and their negative effects are improved or controlled; in this case, postoperative pain.

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