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PA1 An internal audit into the adequacy of pain assessment in a hospice setting. BACKGROUND: Pain is the most common presenting symptom of patients referred to palliative services. The effective management of pain is therefore paramount to any palliative service. The SOCRATES mnemonic is a pain assessment framework that is widely used by healthcare professionals to help them to remember to ask about key questions concerning a patient's pain. The eight elements of this framework are Site, Onset, Character, Radiation, Associated Factors, Timing, Exacerbating and Relieving Factors and Severity. AIM: To assess whether 100% of patients admitted to the hospice in a three month period with pain as a symptom were fully assessed using all elements of the SOCRATES mnemonic. Furthermore to ensure whether these patients were written up for regular and breakthrough analgesia medication. METHODS: New admissions from February to April were identified using SystmOne™ and their records searched for mention of pain as a symptom and a score assigned according to the number of elements of SOCRATES used. The medications section on SystmOne™ was checked for the prescription of analgesia. RESULTS: The results revealed that 0% of patients were fully assessed using all elements of the SOCRATES mnemonic and 66.7% of patients were partially assessed. The mean average of SOCRATES elements used when assessing pain was 3.3. Regular and breakthrough analgesia were prescribed for 100% of patients who complained of pain. CONCLUSION: This hospice meets standards for prescribing analgesia, however significantly falls below standards on the assessment of pain using all elements of the SOCRATES mnemonic.