Children still experience pain during hospital stay: a cross-sectional study from four countries in Europe

Abstract

Background: Little is known whether children experience pain during hospital stay from the child's own perspective or not. The existing studies tend to be based on a small number of children and therefore have limitations concerning the generalisability of the results. Aim: The aim of this study was to describe children's self-reported pain and experience concerning pain management during hospital stay. Methods: This study has a quantitative cross-sectional design with descriptive statistics as data analysis. Results: A total of 786 questionnaires, Pain in Children in Hospital, were distributed in four countries with the response rate of 75% which was almost equal between countries. Our result showed that 87% (503/579) children at hospital selfreported pain during the past 24 h. Nearly 63% of the children reported a pain score of > 5 the last 24 h. Most of children reported that they had received a question about pain from the hospital staff, and that the staff observed and assessed their pain. Totally 95% reported that they were satisfied with their pain relief during the last 24 h. Conclusion: Our study showed that when children were given the possibility to self-report pain, nearly 2/3 expressed that they had experienced pain during hospital stay. However, most of them reported satisfaction with pain management and their pain relief.

Pain prevalence in infants and preschool children in a Colombian hospital

“…Furthermore, when the assessment was conducted, no invasive procedures associated with pain were performed, such as blood tests and punctures, inter alia. The relevance of these procedures has been highlighted in pain prevalence studies that assessed spontaneous patient reports, where two thirds of the children expressed pain during hospitalization (7). Additionally, LLANTO should be administered in a controlled environment and this in itself introduces a potential bias.…”

“…Pain is a sensory and emotional experience associated with an actual or potential injury (1); it involves biological, cognitive and social components (2,3). It is a frequent condition among the hospitalized pediatric population (4,5), and usually the assessment and management is not optimal (6)(7)(8)(9)(10). It has been said that pain assessment and management in infants and preschool children is challenging due to the cognitive characteristics of this population (11).…”

Pain assessment from Swedish nurses' perspective

“…None of the existing scales are adapted to all ages (Tsze et al, 2013) and therefore there is still a need to develop pain assessment scales, especially for younger children (Von Baeyer et al, 2017). The pain assessment scales are constantly evolving; there is, for example, a revised version of FLACC, r-FLCC, but it has not been validated in a Swedish context (Nilsson, 2016;Voepel-Lewis et al, 2008). In pediatrics that includes children of different ages (in Sweden 0-18 years) and requirements for self-assessment of pain as far as possible, the challenge for nurses will continue to exist, but with more education and regular use of selected pain scales, the work with pain assessments can be facilitated and reduce these challenges.…”

“…Even though research has been able to show the importance of pain assessment, adequate recommendations for both acute and chronic pain are still missing within Swedish health care (Alfvén et al, 2012). A recent study by Vejzovic et al (2020) has also shown that children as inpatients still experience pain during hospitalization.…”

“…Pain relief is a human right (International Association for the Study of Pain, IASP, 1979), but the assessment of children's pain and subsequent treatment are often based on the feeling and assumptions of the nurse (Finley et al, 2005;Vejzovic et al, 2020).…”