Presentation Information

Pain Recognition and Assessment in the NICU: Tools and Parental Engagement

• Speaker: Emma Olsson , RN, PhD
• Presentation Type:
• Duration: 60 Mins
• Credits: 1 CERP, 1 Nursing CEU, 1 CME

Abstract:

Preterm and sick infants that are cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit are exposed to a lot of pain and painful procedures during their stay. These repeated painful procedures can negatively impact their future development. To be able to treat their pain in a safe and effective way the pain needs to be recognized and assessed. Assessing neonatal pain is a difficult task since these infants lack the ability to verbalize their pain and the smallest and sickest infants also have a reduced ability to show signs of pain making this even more challenging. There are a wide range of different pain assessment scales for this population and also a number of neurophysiological methods that are used in research to assess pain. During my talk I will explain how these different methods work as well as the pro´s and con´s for their clinical use. In all aspects of neonatal care, the infant´s parents should be involved, and I will therefore also discuss how we could include parents in pain assessment as well.