Background and Aims Multimodal approach to pain in critical patients, using different drugs combined with regional analgesia can improve clinical outcomes. This study aims to assess nurse´s perspective regarding this approach, namely pain management outcome and practical aspects regarding epidural analgesia manipulation.

Methods The authors designed an anonymous survey, applied to nurses of a mix case ICU (12-beds), from a tertiary Portuguese Hospital. Questions focused on clinical details, pain management and daily routines.

Results The survey was answered by 85.3% of the team (29/34), epidemiological results can be consulted in table 1. From nurse´s perspective, multimodal analgesia with epidural globally benefits patient outcome (100%), reduces sedation days (96.6%) and allows early ventilator weaning (93.1%) and rehabilitation (96.6%), contributes to a better sleep quality (89.7%) and doesn´t negatively impact the digestive tract (100%). Epidural analgesia doesn´t appear to interfere with nurse´s daily care (96.6%), neither makes pain assessment more difficult (86.2%). Differing opinions were seen regarding drug infusion ballon (65.5% better than perfusion pump) and which patient benefits the most (55.2% surgical and 44.8% surgical and medical), the latter with an apparent connection to professional experience.

Conclusions From nurse’s perspective, a multidisciplinary approach has a clear benefit for critical care patients, with no interference with their daily routine. It was interesting to verify that the greater the professional experience, the bigger recognition of epidural analgesia benefits in different patients. The authors recognize the small sample bias, but highlight the importance of epidural analgesia in ICU from nurse´s perspective, essential in patient management, rarely addressed in literature.