title: Nurses' attitudes and perceptions of pain assessment in neonatal intensive care.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Pain assessment of premature infants continue to be ineffective. The problem may be partly because of misconceptions or lack of knowledge in the assessment of pain in children.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  This paper reports a study to describe nurses' attitudes towards and perceptions of pain assessment in neonatal intensive care and the demographic factors related to these attitudes and perceptions of pain.
  
  
  METHODS
  The participants consisted of 257 Finnish nurses who were recruited from all five of the country's university hospitals caring for the premature infants receiving intensive care or monitoring. We collected data by using a Likert-type questionnaire in spring 2006. The response rate was 71% from the represented population.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Almost all (97%) of the nurses agreed that pain assessment in premature infants is important. However, over half (60%) of the respondents agreed that they could assess the premature infants pain reliably without pain scores. The respondents' perceptions of the premature infants' ability to sense and express pain indicated rather good knowledge of the topic. Nevertheless, one-fourth of the participants was unaware that a premature infant could be more sensitive in sensing pain than a full term counterpart. Education, work experience and the working unit were the demographic factors that were significantly related to the respondents' attitudes and perceptions.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  On average nurses' attitudes were positive towards the pain assessment in neonatal intensive care. However, there were some gaps in the knowledge concerning the respondents' perceptions of the items, which is a challenge to nursing and nursing education.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Health Sciences, University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland. tarja.polkki@nic.fi
authors.forename: Tarja
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Pölkki
authors.forename: Anne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Korhonen
authors.forename: Helena
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Laukkala
authors.forename: Timo
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Saarela
authors.forename: Katri
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Vehviläinen-Julkunen
authors.forename: Anna-Maija
authors.initials: AM
authors.lastname: Pietilä
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D001294:Attitude to Health; D002391:Catchment Area, Health; D005387:Finland / Q000453:epidemiology; D006801:Humans; D007231:Infant, Newborn; D007363:Intensive Care Units, Neonatal / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D015997:Neonatal Screening; D009726:Nurses; D010146:Pain / Q000175:diagnosis* / Q000453:epidemiology*; D010147:Pain Measurement; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires