Honored Excellence
Nurse Residents Present Pediatric Pain Research at National Conference
In October 2009, when nurse residents on Comer 5 and 6 noted their young patients' pain was being not effectively managed, they determined something had to be done. Knowing that managing pain in a pediatric population is critically important, the nurse residents dedicated their residency project to determining whether the Wong-Baker FACES pain rating scale being used on their units was the best model for patients ages three to seven years old.
The FACES scale asks patients to choose one of six faces showing increasing amounts of distress that correlates with the level of their pain.
"We wanted to find out if the literature showed the Wong-Baker scale to be an appropriate model for patients in that age bracket because we felt those children couldn't identify with the scale's shades of grey," said Ashley Giblin, RN, BSN, a staff nurse on Comer 6, who led the project. Theresa Wyatt, RN, BSN; Melissa Fuld, RN, BSN; Rachel Shaub, RN, BSN; and Erika Tompkins, RN, BSN comprised the other members of Giblin's team.
Giblin said patients would often point to the saddest face on the scale (correlating with the highest level of pain) even when the nurses could tell by their behavior that they weren't in an extreme amount of pain. Or, she said, there were patients who "always wanted to be the happy kid," and, thus, would point to the happy face (correlating with the least amount of pain) even if the nurses knew they were fairly uncomfortable.
The team conducted a literature review and found that the research that has been done has proved the model is effective in kids ages zero through 18, but that patients ages seven and older were skewing the results.
Giblin gave a poster presentation on the project's findings at the UHC/AACN conference held in last March in Gaylord, Texas. The team's research was one of 15 nurse residency projects from across the country chosen to present at the conference.