Finding the evidence to change practice for assessing pain in children who are cognitively impaired.
We report on a quality improvement project whose purpose was to systematically review behavioral pain assessment tools for children who are cognitively impaired, with the goal of identifying a valid and reliable tool for clinical practice. In addition, we sought to partner with parents and/or caregivers to expand their role in pain assessment. The project team conducted an extensive synthesis of the literature to examine the availability and quality of published pain assessment tools for use with children with cognitive impairment (CI) or developmental disability. Once completed, we identified 2 of the available 10 tools to test in the clinical setting. Data from this quality improvement project provided evidence to support the adoption of the revised Faces, Legs, Activity, Cry, and Consolability pain assessment tool for children with CI into clinical practice.
The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, USA. ely@email.chop.edu
Elizabeth
E
Ely
Mei Lin
ML
Chen-Lim
Colleen
C
Zarnowsky
Renee
R
Green
Susan
S
Shaffer
Brenda
B
Holtzer
D002648:Child; D002652:Child Behavior; D003072:Cognition Disorders / Q000451:nursing* / Q000503:physiopathology; D055318:Evidence-Based Nursing; D006801:Humans; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D010146:Pain / Q000523:psychology; D010147:Pain Measurement / Q000379:methods / Q000451:nursing*; D010287:Parent-Child Relations; D010371:Pediatric Nursing; D019989:Persons with Intellectual Disabilities; D011368:Professional-Family Relations; D011785:Quality Assurance, Health Care; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012380:Role