Pain Management
We do everything in our power to ensure that your child's stay is as pain-free as possible. However, it is inevitable that some procedures will cause discomfort. This can be a frightening experience for many children, and for this reason, Valley Children's Hospital is committed to making pain assessment and management a priority for your child.
Assessment of your child's pain is very important so that the nurses and doctors can more effectively treat them. Pain that goes untreated can interfere with your child's sleep, eating, and play schedule. Valley Children's Hospital uses several methods to determine the level of your child's pain, methods that parents can also use at home.
Ways to assess a child’s pain level
Our team uses many different methods to assess if a child is in pain. We understand that children express themselves in different ways, both verbal and nonverbal, so we are attuned to signs that cue us to how a child feels, based on what they say and how they act.
What a child says
The best way to know if your child is hurting is to ask. Only your child knows how they feel. Even kids as young as 3 or 4 years old can tell us how much they are hurting.
The hospital uses pain assessment tools as a way of rating how much pain a child is feeling so our medical and nursing staff can administer the appropriate treatment. Examples of these assessment tools include:
- The Faces Scale, which shows a series of faces from happy (no pain) to very upset (the worst possible pain). If this tool is used, your child will be asked to choose the face that matches how they feel.
- The Number Scale, in which a child rates his/her amount of pain from 0 (no pain) to 10 (worst pain).
- Your child may also be asked to respond to questions such as: "Where does it hurt? Can you describe your pain? What makes the pain better or worse?"
How a child acts
Changes in a child's behavior can also be important clues in the presence of pain, especially in babies and young children who can't tell us exactly where they hurt or describe the way they feel. Behaviors such as crying, changes in facial expression, holding or rubbing where it hurts, being less active than normal, and not eating or sleeping can all be important clues to your child's pain.
The hospital uses behavioral pain rating scales for infants and young children who are not verbal.
It is also important to remember that a child can have pain and not show it. Play is one of the ways that a child copes with pain, and children may sleep because they are tired from the pain.
How the child's body is reacting
Pain can change a child's heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, level of oxygen, skin color, temperature, and sweating. These changes usually don't last long, even if the pain persists. They can also be caused by anxiety, hunger, or because of your child's medical condition.
Pain medicines vs. substance abuse
Many parents worry that their child will develop an addiction to their pain medication and continue to need the drug for psychological effects and not for medical reasons. These worries are unfounded, as numerous studies show that children will take less pain medicine as pain decreases and eventually stop taking the medicine as pain ceases.
Pain management care team
When assessing and treating your child's pain, specialists from throughout the hospital work together to ensure a comfortable stay for him/her. Valley Children's doctors, nurses, child life specialists, psychologists, pain service personnel, rehab/physical therapists, and even our chaplains help control your child's pain.
But it's not just hospital staff who play a part in pain management. Parents are also very important because they're experts when it comes to their child's pain. If you know that your child is in pain, it is essential that you tell the nurse or doctor right away. Parents should always consider themselves part of their child's "health care team", but especially so when it comes to pain management.
Remember, when your child must have a procedure that is painful, tell them the truth about what will happen and what it will feel like. How you react can and usually will affect how your child responds.