Abstract
Background: Pain is regarded as the fifth “vital sign” within health care. Management of pain has become essential to improve patient compliance, patient satisfaction, and optimize the utilization of medical services. Starting in early childhood, implementing pediatric pain management strategies/protocols and using age appropriate resources, can create a positive impact on a child’s medical care. Understanding the concept of acute pain, identify contributing factors that lead to inadequate pain management, and identify strategies to promote effective utilization of pain management are essential in breaking the chain of inadequate management of acute pain in the pediatric acute care setting.|Problem: Acute pain is a common occurrence among pediatric patients within the acute care setting. Many factors influence the underutilization of pain management strategies and while acute care facilities are striving to implement adequate pain management protocols in pediatrics, it continues to remain a challenge.|Purpose: The purpose of this project was to implement a standardized acute pain management protocol in a pediatric acute care setting in order to facilitate a consistent, evidence-based standard of care for pediatric patients experiencing acute procedural pain.|Methods: Data collection was completed via chart audits. Convenience sampling was used to select a total of 100 charts, 50 charts pre-implementation and 50 charts post-implementation. Variables dependent on the protocol were analyzed to show statistical significance in pain management utilization.|Results: There was a statistically significant increase with the use of J-Tip, 6% pre- to 22% post-implementation, respectively (p=.02) with minimal to no change in use of other methods. A child’s age or gender revealed no significant association (age p=.70, gender p=.21). There was a statistically significant difference between shifts worked and using a method with 50% of day shift and only 19% of night shift using a method (p=.004).|Conclusion: Procedural pain management is an important aspect of a child’s care while hospitalized. Overall, this DNP QI project demonstrated that education does improve use of available methods and also identified a specific gap in shift worked when it came to use of available procedural pain methods. Although further steps can be taken to improve use, this project encouraged nursing and providers to be more aware of the pain children experience while hospitalized. To propel the next phase forward, gaining organizational support will be instrumental in facilitating the development of an evidenced-based protocol and will be the next stepping stone to help ease the pain a child experiences while hospitalized.