Pain Assessment in Aged Care: Lessons from Nurse Maude

Improving pain assessment in aged care: Nurse Maude’s Story

The challenge of identifying pain in aged care:

For hospital and aged care providers identifying and managing pain can be challenging when residents are living with complex care requirements. In particular, this difficult if a resident is living with Dementia or cognitive impairment, as they are likely unable to communicate their pain.

VCare client, Nurse Maude Hospital faced just that, with staff relying on manual documentation and subjective tools, pain assessment and follow-up varied across teams.

Introducing a new approach to pain assessment:

Following the introduction of PainChek®’s pain assessment device in 2024 and integrating directly with VCare, Nurse Maude has achieved clear, measurable improvements:

Clear results:

📈 12% month-on-month growth in completed pain assessments, enabling earlier identification and intervention

📅 35% increase in follow-up assessments, supporting real-time review of pain management effectiveness

💡63% of assessments identifying new pain, uncovering, previously under-recognised or under-reported discomfort

Hear it from them:

Importantly, staff have also noticed the difference in day-to-day care. Clinical Nurse Educator Ruth Abad shared the impact PainChek® has had on both staff confidence and resident wellbeing:

│ “Since introducing PainChek®, pain is talked about more and pain assessment is readily available, so staff are more open to completing one. It puts into a visual representation how much pain a resident is in and they strive to alter that. With pain assessment done, they feel more confident to give out pain medication.

For residents, having pain relief immediately improves their mood and tolerance for interventions. Families are grateful. I would strongly advocate for PainChek® to be available to all nurses in all fields. It makes pain assessments so much more credible and accessible. Time to step into the future of pain assessment.”

– Ruth Abad, Clinical Nurse Educator, Nurse Maude

What this means for aged care providers:

Overall, Nurse Maude’s experience shows how AI-enabled pain assessment can strengthen the quality of care delivery in aged care, supporting better outcomes for patients, staff, and whānau (families).

Through the integration of PainChek in VCare, pain assessments flow directly into resident records, alerts support timely reassessment and teams gain a clearer, real-time view of pain management, without duplication or extra documentation.