Pain Management: Children

What you'll learn

Course overview

Pain assessment and management should be conducted differently from population to population. An infant may express pain or discomfort differently from a geriatric person, who in turn, may have a totally different response to pain from a person who has difficulty communicating. Although these populations may have different experiences, diseases such as cancer, HIV, or sickle cell know no boundaries. With these terrible diseases comes the associated and sometimes unique pain. Pain is very common problem that has brought suffering in one form or another, to most of us throughout our lives. In fact, pain is the most common reason we seek medical attention. Health care professionals in all settings encounter pain. Unfortunately it is often under treated in spite of the availability of effective drugs and other therapies. Too frequently it is discovered that pain management has a low priority in a system focused on treating disease. Failure to routinely assess and document pain, and the fact that no one is accountable when pain is poorly managed, further leads to inadequate pain management. All patients at admission are asked the following screening or general questions about the presence of pain: Do you have pain now? Have you had pain in the last several months? If the patient responds ¿yes¿ to either question, additional assessment data are obtained: ¿Pain intensity (use a pain intensity rating scale appropriate for the patient population; pain intensity is obtained for pain at present, at worst, and at best or least; if at all possible, the pain rating scale is consistently used in the organization and between disciplines) ¿Location (ask the patient to mark on a diagram or point to the site of pain) ¿Quality, patterns of radiation, if any, character (elicit and record the patient¿s own words whenever possible) ¿Onset, duration, variations and patterns ¿Alleviating and aggravating factors ¿Present pain management regimen and effectiveness ¿Pain management history (including a medication history, presence of common barriers to reporting pain and using analgesics, past interventions and response, manner of expressing pain) ¿Effects of pain (impact on daily life, function, sleep, appetite, relationships with others, emotions, concentration, etc.)