ABSTRACT
Issue and its significance: There are several measurement tools of neonatal pain, although few are validated and with clinical applicability to measure the presence and intensity of pain. Aims: to identify the difficulties faced by the nursing professionals in applying the Neonatal Infant Pain Scale to measure the pain as the fifty vital sign in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit; to describe the pain-relief measures used by nursing professionals from the observation of a positive score during the scale use. Method: descriptive study with a quality approach. The scenario of the study will be a state maternity hospital in Rio de Janeiro, whose nursing professionals are the population of this research. The data gathering will be from August to October 2013. The statistics analysis will be through Program EPI INFO 3.5.2®...