When Children Hurt
As an ER nurse, I saw a lot of people in pain, either arriving at our door to have their pain relieved or enduring the pain of needed treatments, knowing that the interventions were necessary. In my experience, though, there’s nothing worse than seeing a child in pain, and the younger the child, the more awful it was.
You began the encounter with a sick or injured child who was already frightened by the circumstances that had caused their parents or guardians to bring them to the hospital. It’s hard to get past the frightened eyes and tears, the little ones trying to burrow into their mother’s shoulder and not wanting to be put down on a paper-covered table. And this was before even attempting any assessment.
Nurse uses Wong–Baker FACES Pain Rating Scale to help assess patient’s pain. Photo by Gerry Melendez/The State/MCT via Getty Images.
Factors to consider in assessing a child’s pain.
We were taught that “pain is what the patient says it is,” and that still seems to be true of children’s reports of pain. But there are many factors that need to be considered, such […]