Journal of developmental and behavioral pediatrics : JDBP
-
J Dev Behav Pediatr · Jun 1990
The consistency of young children's assessment of remembered painful events.
Clinicians need to know the consistency of a child's report of his pain in order to assess the intensity of that pain. To explore an age cutoff above which children are consistent in reporting their pain, we tested the consistency of children's reports of recalled pain, using a variety of scales. ⋯ However, no age group tested was consistent more than 80% of the time on all measures. We conclude that children are able to report remembered pain intensity consistently with increasing age but that we cannot establish a firm cutoff between the ages of three and eight years with our data.