Today@Dal

Published September 30 by the Globe and Mail:

When a child ends up in hospital, we assume everything will be done to care for them, including minimizing pain.

Unfortunately, that assumption is wrong. Two new research papers serve as a grim reminder that pain is systematically undertreated in children.

One study, led by Kathryn Birnie of the Centre for Pediatric Pain Research at Dalhousie University in Halifax, found that fewer than half of hospitalized children have a pain management plan. In other words, controlling pain is often an afterthought.

The paper, published in the medical journal Pain Research and Management, also shows that even so-called low-intensity pain matters a lot to patients.

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“Most people don’t take pain seriously,” said Dr. Christine Chambers, a Dalhousie University professor who was, until recently, the Canada Research Chair in pain and child health. She said Canadian health professionals aren’t taught enough about it – veterinarians get five times as much education on pain management as physicians.

Parents tend to mistakenly think either that not much can be done, or that everything possible is being done, to control their child’s pain. They have to be demanding, which shouldn’t be the case.

Read the rest of this article online.