Background For people at the end-of-life, pain is one of the most common symptoms, and many people experience pain management inadequate or insufficient. Previous studies have shown that there are deficiencies in the nurse's assessment of the patient's pain and regularly assessment increases the ability to achieve good pain management. By analyzing and summarizing data from the Swedish register of palliative care it is possible to improve the quality of palliative care.

Aim The aim was to identify the presence of pain and pain management in palliative care and to illustrate the factors that influence pain. The aim was also to examine to what extent validated tool for pain assessment were used to assess pain and if there were differences in pain management when pain assessment tools were used.

Method The study was a non-experimental cross-sectional study with a quantitative design consisting of retrospective data from the Swedish register of palliative care. In total 27 863 people in residential care, care home, temporary location, or in their own homes were included.

Results Pain was present in a total of 71, 4 % of the people during the last week of life and was more common in the age group of adults than in children and the elderly. Pain assessment tools were used in low scale to assess the person's pain. In the study 94, 2 % had an individual on demand prescription of painkillers. In four of five cases the pain was completely alleviated. There was no connection between rated pain and pain relief.

Conclusion Knowledge of pain being common at the end-of-life, that not everyone gets their pain completely relieved and that pain assessment tools are rarely used, may be the basis for improvement on operational level.