Journal of pediatric nursing
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Reliability and validity of the Faces and Word Descriptor Scales to measure pain in verbal children undergoing painful procedures were assessed. Test-retest reliability and construct and discriminant validity were supported for both instruments among a sample of 118 children in three age groups (3-7, 8-12, 13-18). ⋯ A majority of the children preferred to use the Faces scale when providing self-report of pain regardless of age. The Faces and Word Descriptor Scales are valid and reliable instruments to measure procedural pain intensity.
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Randomized Controlled Trial Clinical Trial
Postoperative use of pediatric pain scales: children's self-report versus nurse assessment of pain intensity and affect.
The purpose was to examine nurses' use of pediatric pain scales and to compare their estimate of the child's pain intensity and affect with the child's self-report. The Analog Chromatic Continuous Scale (ACCS) was used for pain intensity and the McGrath Affective Faces Scale (MAFS) for pain affect. Self-report of pain was obtained from 124 hospitalized postoperative children aged 5 to 17 years and compared with estimates of 44 pediatric nurses randomly assigned to either an experimental or control group. ⋯ Findings revealed that only 36% of the nurses had at any time used a pediatric pain scale. Correlations between the experimental nurses' ratings and the child's self-report were significantly higher than the control nurses' estimates and the child's self-report. The correlation between the child's self-report of pain intensity on the ACCS and of affect on the MAFS was r = .612, suggesting that nurses' use of both an intensity and affect pediatric pain scale would more accurately reflect the child's pain experience.
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A qualitative grounded theory method was used to examine hospitalized children's experiences of acute pain. Understanding the children's pain experiences included identifying children's responses, factors influencing children's responses, and the meanings children associated with their pain experiences. A sample of 11 surgical pediatric patients, 2-1/2 to 6-1/2 years of age, participated. ⋯ Data analysis was based on the constant comparative method. Findings revealed that the pain experience determined how the overall hospitalization was experienced by the children. "Getting better" was identified as the basic psychosocial process children used to deal with the pain. A beginning model of the young child's pain experience was developed and is presented here.
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The purpose of this study was to describe the experience of pain in infants and children in response to venipuncture and intravenous cannulation. Data on physiological, behavioral, and subjective responses were collected from 90 infants and children, in subgroups of 1 to 12 months, 1 to 3 years, 4 to 6 years, and 7 to 12 years. Changes in behavior were significant in all four groups, although the toddler group was the only group that showed a significant physiological change. The subjective measures showed that the children were able to identify their pain sites and intensity.
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The Oucher and the Poker Chip Tool are two of the most widely used instruments designed to measure children's self-report of pain intensity. Most of the studies dealing with the Oucher and the Poker Chip Tool use North American children as subjects. To establish the versatility of the instruments in patients of various cultural backgrounds and with different types of pain, this study used the Oucher and the Poker Chip Tool with 100 Danish children, age 3 to 15 years, after tonsillectomy. ⋯ Although the Poker Chip Tool only provides five discrete levels of pain, the strong positive relationships between the pain scores derived from the Oucher and the Poker Chip Tool (r = 0.71-0.79, p < .001) indicate its utility in clinical practice. The Oucher uses actual pictures of a child and therefore demonstrates ethnicity directly. The results of this study suggest that Danish children as well as American children are able to use the Oucher as a method to self-report pain intensity.