RESUMEN
It is currently estimated that the lack of adequate pain management affects 80% of the global population and the phenomenon poses a serious problem in more than 150 countries. On a national level, the greatest burden of inadequate treatment is borne, among others, by elderly patients. The purpose of the paper was to compare the prevalence of barriers to optimum post-operative pain management in elderly patients, observed by nurses in a clinical, provincial and municipal hospital in Poland. The research project was a multi-center one and took over a year. The study was questionnaire-based. It used the Polish version of the Nurses' Perceived Obstacles to Pain Assessment and Management Practices questionnaire. The study included a total of 1602 nurses working at a clinical, provincial and municipal hospital. In the university hospital, difficulties in pain assessment related to the healthcare system occurred statistically significantly more often.
