Welcome to SPiNH
Unrelieved pain among nursing home residents significantly decreases residents’ quality of life, resulting in agitation, depression, behavior problems, and accelerated functional decline. Residents with dementia are at highest risk for underestimated pain because they have more difficulties communicating their pain. This website provides long-term care staff with the resources they need in order to better assess and treat pain in their dementia residents. Resources include:
- Assessment Tools: This section contains details about various evidence-based assessment tools used by clinical staff to assess pain.
- Algorithms: Step-by-step problem-solving procedures or algorithms, if performed in a prescribed sequence, will provide information on how to proceed with decision making related to the topic. The algorithms in this section are intended for pain management problem-solving and are interactive.
- Webinars: This section contains links to various educational presentations that were either delivered live or were created to be viewed on-demand.
- Evidence-based Research: In this section you will find the most up-to-date materials, both print and online, on research-based programs and interventions available to assess, manage and treat pain in cognitively impaired residents.
- Case Studies (not currently available): Using real-life case scenarios, this section illustrates how to successfully apply various assessment and treatment pain protocols with even your most challenging residents.
- EQUIP Resources: EQUIP for Quality (www.equipforquality.com) is a decision-support software program that is widely used in nursing homes throughout the country to assist staff in care-planning and to improve quality of care. All facilities participating in the NYS DOH Dementia Pain grant have access to the web-based EQUIP software program as well as to the new module that was created in EQUIP focusing specifically on the dementia population. Several new dementia-specific quality measures were developed, including an undetected pain measure. In this section, you will find an overview of EQUIP for Quality, on-demand tutorials about the new dementia-specific measures and how to use them, and a link to EQUIP.
You can access any of these resources by logging into www.spinh.org and clicking on the "Resources" button at the top of the home page. Information on this website is also available by role type. For example, clicking on the "Licensed Staff" buttton on the home page will bring you to a section that lists resources specific to licensed staff.
Please note that this website is meant to be interactive and your comments are welcome.