Health

What are the basic guidelines for selecting and administering analgesics to children with pain? Selection of analgesics for children with pain should be part of a multimodal treatment plan. Consistent with principles of analgesia, consider the six rights of medication administration: (1) right patient, (2) right drug, (3) right route, (4) right dose, (5) right …

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Is there a basic treatment algorithm to control children’s pain? There are substantial disparities in pain treatment with undertreatment and inadequate treatment common in children. One significant contributing factor to undertreatment is lack of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval and guidance for prescribing pain medications to children. Another factor is the lack of …

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Which pain assessment tools should be incorporated into routine clinical practice? Pain is the most common reason individuals seek health care services, so all patients should be screened for pain at every health care visit. If pain is the focus of the visit, a thorough pain assessment, medical history, and physical examination are necessary to …

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How to assess pain experiences of children with autism spectrum disorders? As previously mentioned, health care providers and parents are more likely to believe and attend to children’s behaviors when they are consistent with expected pain-related behaviors. Children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) do not consistently demonstrate socially expected interactions and nonverbal behaviors that facilitate …

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How to assess pain experiences of children with intellectual disabilities? Children with intellectual disabilities are the most burdened by pain due to their need for frequent medical procedures and their inability to communicate pain with the simple self-report tools. A hierarchy of pain assessment techniques has been recommended. The first step on this hierarchy is …

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How to assess childrens pain experiences? Self-report is the gold standard for assessing children’s pain. By 3 to 4 years of age, children can differentiate pain intensity with pictorial adaptations of the numeric rating scale (NRS) and visual analogue scale. Most children over 7 to 8 years of age can understand rank order and rank …

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How to assess infants pain experiences? Valid and reliable pain assessment tools for infants and preverbal children are actually indirect measures of pain. Because these tools rely on observed behaviors and physiologic measures, they do not measure pain intensity but rather quantify responses to pain-related distress. Scores from these tools are influenced by contextual factors, …

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