Traditionally, patients have anticipated hospitalization as a painful experience. But many hospitals in Orange County are striving to change that.

Not only are they adopting new technology for relief of surgical pain, but they are setting up clinics where people can go to soothe their chronic aches.

Within the past decade, more hospitals have begun to catch up with the latest pain management equipment and practices. Some have installed pump systems at bedsides that allow patients to control their pain medication after surgery, rather than wait for a nurse to give them injections.

Going further, some hospitals have begun to infuse narcotics near the spine through slender tubes known as catheters to reduce the severe pain following abdominal or chest surgery or total hip and joint replacements.

This pain relief has reduced respiratory complications in chest surgery patients by allowing them to breath more deeply and has promoted quicker recovery from hip and joint surgery by making it easier for patients to exercise, according to physicians who use the technique at UCI Medical Center in Orange and Hoag Hospital in Newport Beach.

Recognizing that not everyone in the medical community can keep up with the technological breakthroughs on the pain front, some hospitals, such as UCI, Hoag and Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, have developed teams of anesthesiologists, nurses and pharmacists available around the clock to assist private physicians who need help with more difficult pain cases.

Administrators at Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center in Mission Viejo and Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and Medical Center said they, too, are considering a hospital-based pain service like that at UCI and Hoag.

"We would have the opportunity to change behavior on the part of staff physicians," said Fountain Valley Regional Hospital administrator Richard Butler.

Before adopting new procedures, some hospitals are surveying the attitudes of their staff doctors, nurses and patients toward the status of pain control in their institutions and prevailing attitudes toward the use of narcotics.

St. Joseph Hospital in Orange, Fountain Valley Regional Hospital and St. Jude Medical Center in Fullerton have recently completed such surveys.