Your assignment is to prepare and submit a paper on nursing the patient in pain. Searches will be made based upon these 5 aspects of epidural anaesthesia, using as a beginning the references supplied by Chumbley and Thomas. Epidural analgesia is now a commonly used technique used to manage the acute pain which comes after surgery, usually being a planned procedure, the best time to consider postoperative pain relief actually being before surgery begins. The method first became available in the 1960s ( Klein, 2011) and has increased in use especially since the1980s (Wheatley et al, 2001). Usually it is given for from 2 to 5 days postoperatively , this depending upon the surgery type undergone. After this period the patient should have recovered enough to cope with oral medication for their pain relief. ( Chumbley and Thomas, 2010, page 40).