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Patients under the care of an IPS should be reviewed by the IPS regularly, with patients receiving epidural analgesia or other continuous local anaesthetic infusions being seen at least once daily.

Adequate numbers of clinical nurse specialists in pain medicine should be available to fulfil the following roles within working hours:

• review of patients in pain with appropriate frequency to provide a safe and effective service
• provision of advice to ward staff and other healthcare teams regarding all aspects of pain management
• liaise with an appropriate pain medicine specialist to highlight...

The IPS should aim to provide multidisciplinary assessment and management of pain where needed. This should involve collaborative working with allied health professionals including pharmacists, physiotherapists, applied psychologists, liaison psychiatrists and addiction medicine specialists.^33,34

Outpatient (chronic) pain management teams should be available to provide advice to the IPS during working hours. This activity should be supported through job planning. If possible, the inpatient and outpatient (chronic) pain services should be integrated, with team members working in both environments, to ensure coordinated care for patients with complex pain while in hospital and also for those...

All equipment and disposables must be compliant with local and national safety policies. There should be an adequate supply of the following:^{37, 36, 39, 40}

• infusion pumps for neuraxial analgesia (epidural infusion/patient controlled epidural analgesia (PCEA) and potentially intrathecal infusions)³⁵
• infusion pumps for use with continuous regional analgesia catheters
• patient controlled analgesia infusion pumps
• infusion...

Ultrasound scanning, nerve stimulators and all equipment and drugs necessary to perform local and regional analgesic techniques should be available.³⁶

Pumps and infusion lines should be single purpose and appropriately coloured or labelled.^37,38,39,40

Drugs for epidural use or for continuous regional anaesthesia infusions should be prepared and stored in compliance with local and national medicines management policies.^{37, 38, 39, 38}

Controlled drugs must be stored and audited in compliance with current legislation.^41,42,43

Efforts should be made to minimize drug administration errors, and these should be compliant with local medicines management policies, which incorporate relevant national policy and frameworks, including the avoidance of ‘Never Events’.^44,45,46,47