A pole of order \(m \in \mathbb {N}\) at \(\beta \in \mathbb {C}\) of a regular operator-valued function \(Q: \mathcal {D}(Q) \rightarrow \mathcal {L}(\mathcal {H})\) is investigated. We provide a characterization of pole cancellation functions \(\varvec{\psi }(z)\) of Q(z) of order \(k \le m\) at \(\beta \) in terms of the coefficients of the Laurent expansion of Q. This characterization yields practical and explicit constructions of pole cancellation functions \(\varvec{\psi }(z)\) . Moreover, it leads to an explicit formula for the associated functions \(\varvec{\hat{\varphi }}(z):= Q(z)\varvec{\psi }(z)\) , which are root functions of order k at the zero \(\beta \) of \(Q^{-1}\) . The results are illustrated by an example.