Bonnie Morgan, MA, RN, CHPN, is the Director of Education at the Hospice of the Valley in Phoenix, Arizona. She and her co-author Carol O. Long, PhD, RN, recently had a new book published by Hopkins Medical Products, "Pain Management-The Resource Guide for Home Health and Hospice Nurses". There is a review of the book in the "Articles" area.

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Questions

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Evelyn Corsini:

What is your professional background and what led you to specialize in pain management?

Bonnie Morgan, MA, RN, CHPN: I began caring for patients in pain in 1990 as a home infusion nurse, and 14 years ago I began to work as a hospice nurse. Over the years, I have been a case manager, an educator, and an administrator. No matter what my job title, I have always found ways to work directly with patients. Currently, I am Director of Education at Hospice of the Valley in Phoenix, AZ. Every day we take care of about 3,300 patients and their families. In addition, I work on the East Valley Palliative Care team in the Catholic HealthCare West system. We provide direct patient care to hospitalized patients with life-limiting illnesses.

EC: What led you to write this book?

BM: Carol Long, PhD, RN, my co-author, has worked for years with Carolyn Humphrey, who became our editor. Carolyn had been the editor of the Home Healthcare Nurse for 10 years. She recognized the need for practical tools that would help empower the bedside nurse to have more proficiency in directly managing pain. She contacted Carol initially about writing some practical pain tools home health nurses could use. Carol is an expert educator, research, and writer, having taught nursing at Arizona State University for many years. Over the years, she and I have worked together in hospice and other professional arenas. Because of our experience working together, she called me and asked if I would be interested in creating these tools to help the bedside nurse with pain management. Little did I realize at that time, that this would grow into a huge project that would take over 20 months to complete, and would turn into the very comprehensive book that it is today.

EC: What was it like for you, as a nurse clinician, to take on a new role as a medical writer and educator?

BM: I have frequently said to my colleagues and my friends, that this has been the most challenging professional task that I have ever undertaken. I learned so much about a variety of things. I learned the importance of research and evidence-based practice; the complexity of simplifying information without losing the valuable "meat" of the content; and how to assure that the final product meets the needs of the readers.

EC: How would you like people to use this book?

BM: My primary hope in writing this book is that direct care-giving nurses will find this a useful tool at the bedside. When they are taking care of patients in pain, I hope that this resource guide will provide them with information that is practical, direct, easy-to-understand, and easy to implement. There is theory in the book, but I am more interested in its practical application. I hope that I will hear some day that one of the tables, or the example of titrating or converting from one opioid to another, was exactly what the clinician needed to relieve a patient’s pain.

EC: Do you have advice for other nurses who are interested in writing?

BM: As it is with most challenging things in life, I believe that the person who does the work learns the most. That is certainly true for me. I will never be able to measure what writing this book has done for me as a direct care clinician. While there were several times, I wanted to quit, Carol Long was always there to encourage me. Having her expertise as a nursing professor was invaluable during the process, and I am very proud of the work we have produced.