title: Pain in children: knowledge and perceptions of the nursing staff at a rural tertiary care teaching hospital in India.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To assess the knowledge and perception regarding pain amongst nursing staff and to determine whether varying clinical exposure to painful procedures in children had any association with their perception of pain.
  
  
  METHODS
  A consensually validated questionnaire containing combination of questions from basic (must know) and advanced (nice to know) areas of knowledge about nursing pediatric patients and questions related to nurses' perception about pain in pediatric patients was administered to the eligible nursing staff at a Rural Tertiary Care Hospital in Western India. The responses to the questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the comparisons were made by applying chi-square test.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Three Hundred and Fifty one usable questionnaires (83.37 %) out of 421 were returned. The knowledge of the nurses in general regarding pain was observed to be poor. Only 60 % of all the nurses had complete knowledge of all the basic questions asked. Only 3.1 % had answered all of the five advanced questions correctly, while 96.9 % of the nurses had answered one or more questions incorrectly.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The deficit in knowledge and shortcomings in perception of nursing staff needs to be addressed and steps need to be taken to improve the nurse's knowledge and modify beliefs and attitude of the nursing staff towards the pain of the pediatric patients.
authors: Neonatal Unit, Department of Pediatrics, Pramukhswami Medical College, Karamsad, Anand, Gujarat 388325, India.
authors: Archana S
authors: AS
authors: Nimbalkar
authors: Ashish R
authors: AR
authors: Dongara
authors: Jaishree D
authors: JD
authors: Ganjiwale
authors: Somashekhar M
authors: SM
authors: Nimbalkar
mesh_terms: D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002648:Child; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003906:Developing Countries; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007194:India; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000193:education / Q000523:psychology*; D010146:Pain / Q000175:diagnosis / Q000523:psychology*; D010147:Pain Measurement; D019035:Rural Health Services; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D063128:Tertiary Health Care