Assessment of Children's Pain course for Nurses

This session describes the assessment of pain in paediatric practice highlighting the different methodologies used when assessing acute and chronic pain.

Learning Objectives

By the end of this session you will be able to:

• Identify appropriate clinical methods to assess pain
• Explain the relevance of the biopsychosocial model to pain assessment in children
• List the elements of cyclical assessment
• Distinguish between methods suitable for assessing acute and chronic pain
• Describe age-appropriate, validated pain assessment tools that can be used by the child, parent or carer and the healthcare professional

In children, pain assessment can present greater challenges than in adults, because the naturally occurring changes of growing up affect not only their physical state, but also their psychological state and social status.