[Pediatric pain management by nurses in educational hospitals of Shahrekord in 2006]

ABSTRACT

Pain is a health problem and major part of the life in childhood, pain associated with different illnesses is one of the most common symptoms that children experience in the hospitals. Relieving pain is always an essential part of nurses caring role, but yet they feel weakness in pain management. The purpose of this study was to determine pediatric pain management by nurses, in the education hospitals of Shahrekord, Iran. This research was a descriptive and analytic study which conducted on 100 nurses. The data gathering tool was a questionnaire with for subscales demographic data, knowledge [20 items], attitude [20 items], and practice. Data were analyzed by the independent T-test, one way ANOVA test, and Pearson correlation. The finding showed that the mean knowledge, attitude and practice of pediatric pain management by nurses were 13.09 +/- 1.9, 76.1 +/- 7.2, 8.42 +/- 2.9 and majority of nurses demonstrated knowledge [73.1%], attitude [69.1%] and practice [71.3%] moderated. There was not a significant difference between practice with knowledge and attitude of nurses about management of pain in children. This study demonstrated that the knowledge, attitude and function of the nurses about the pediatric pain management were intermediate. It showed that they need to become more aware of pharmacologic pain management with opioids, risks of addiction, non pharmacologic pain management, and respiratory depression and assessment tools of pain