With a focus on practical acute pain management in the hospital setting, Macintyre’s
Acute Pain Management: A Practical Guide provides health professionals with simple and
practical information to help them manage adult patients with acute pain safely and effectively
in both surgical and nonsurgical settings.
Incorporating updated information for all medications and techniques, the sixth edition
of this established text addresses the key issues in analgesic stewardship, including
in the preadmission (where possible), admission and postdischarge phases of a patient’s
care. Combining evidence-based information with practical guidelines and protocols, it
offers vital knowledge on the management of acute pain in both surgical and nonsurgical
patients, including in those with spinal cord injuries, burns, and selected medical
illnesses. More complex issues are covered, such as treating the older patient, those with
a substance use disorder, pregnant or lactating patients, patients with sleep-disordered
breathing, and those with renal or hepatic impairment. The benefits and potential risks for
analgesic medications as well as techniques are discussed, and strategies are outlined that
aim to help mitigate patient harm, including after discharge from hospital.
Macintyre’s Acute Pain Management: A Practical Guide is a valuable and reliable reference
for the variety of professionals who will assess and manage patients with acute
pain, including trainees in anaesthesia and pain medicine programmes, certified registered
nurse anaesthetists, and anaesthesia assistants, junior medical staff and nurses, and
undergraduate/graduate entry level students in medical, nursing, pharmacy and other
health professional courses.
Dr Pamela E. Macintyre after starting her anaesthetic training in England and completing it in Adelaide, Australia, spent two years working in Seattle, Washington, leaving just as Dr. Brian Ready (the coauthor of this book for the first two editions) was starting his pioneering anaesthesiology-based postoperative pain management service. After returning to Adelaide, she was given the chance to set up the first formal acute pain service (APS) in Australasia.
Dr Macintyre was the director of the APS at the Royal Adelaide Hospital in Adelaide, South Australia, from the time it was established at the beginning of 1989 until her retirement from clinical practice in July 2020. Since that time, she has continued to write, teach medical students and doctors who are training in anaesthesia and pain medicine, and contribute to projects with the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and Faculty of Pain Medicine as well as to national prescribing guidelines.
Dr Jane Quinlan trained in anaesthesia in London before moving to Oxford as a consultant. She led the Inpatient Pain Service in Oxford for 15 years and has developed an app to guide ward staff on acute pain prescribing. She is past secretary of the Acute Pain Special Interest Group (APSIG) for the International Association for the Study of Pain and past chair of APSIG of the British Pain Society.
Dr Quinlan sits on the editorial board of the British Journal of Pain, is on the organising committee of the National Acute Pain Symposium, and is an expert advisor to the Beyond Pills All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG).
Dr Jennifer A. Stevens is a practicing anaesthetist and director of the APS at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney, Australia. She has made contributions to research across both fields and has academic appointments at the University of New South Wales and the University of Notre Dame in Sydney. She has helped to improve access to acute pain knowledge and tools for lower resourced hospitals through the ‘Resources for Opioid Stewardship’ freely available through the Australian and New Zealand College of Anaesthetists and Faculty of Pain Medicine website.
