Introduction Surgical operations are inevitable in alleviating certain disease conditions, however, surgical procedures are associated with pain. Pain is defined as "an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described in terms of such damage". 1 Postoperative pain refers to the pain experienced after surgery. 2 Studies show that children feel pain just like the adult population. 3-5 Every individual is entitled to pain management. Pain assessment must first be performed before treatment commences. 6-9 Pain assessment involves the use of subjective and objective measures and the subjective measures involve the use of self-reports where patients verbalize or describe their pain. Objective measures comprising behavioural and physiological measures are commonly used to assess children's pain. Behavioural measures involve observing how a child behaves in response to pain such as facial expressions, crying, body postures and movements. 10 Physiological measures include assessment of heart rate, blood pressure, respiration, oxygen saturation, palmer sweating and temperature. 11 For pain, assessment to be practical, and consistent pain assessment tools and guidelines are used. Some of the common pain assessment tools used among children include Faces Pain Scale-Revised (FPS-R), the Wong-Baker Faces Scale and the Oucher Scale, the Face, Legs, Activity, Cry and Consolability (FLACC), the Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario Pain Scale (CHEOPS), the Toddler-Preschooler Postoperative Pain Scale (TPPPS), and the Parents' Postoperative Pain Rating Scale (PPPRS). It has been established that inadequate assessment of post-operative pain leads to inadequate management which can lead to severe complications such as delayed wound healing, deep vein thrombosis, atelectasis, pneumonia and even death. 12-15 Despite the knowledge

Pain is a common occurrence in children after surgery, but it has been neglected over the years. Management of pain is a fundamental human right for everyone who undergoes any surgical procedure. Pain assessment is the initial step of pain management and involves subjective and objective (behavioural and physiological) measures. This study aimed to describe the challenges of registered nurses in assessing post-operative pain among children (0- 3 years)). Descriptive phenomenology was adopted. Purposive sampling was used to recruit nine registered nurses with experience in nursing children after surgery in Effia Nkwanta Regional Hospital (Ghana). The researchers conducted an in-depth interview which was audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim and qualitatively analysed following Colaizzi’s approach to descriptive phenomenology analysis. The study findings revealed that nurses have experienced several challenges in assessing post-operative pain, including inadequate knowledge, inadequate resources, structural challenges, time constraints, and child-imposed factors. Given these results, nurses should make opportunities to enhance their skills and utilize evidence-based approaches to formally assess paediatric post-operative pain.