Pediatric Pain Management

A fundamental aspect of pediatric healthcare is to help reduce a child’s pain during hospitalization (Ullán et al., 2014). In recent years, there has been an increase in the amount of emerging research that focuses on children’s pain, which in turn has positively impacted the development and expansion of services that aid in treating pain in pediatric patients. There has been improvement in the standards and guidelines surrounding the practices of pediatric pain management. The fundamental points of these standards and guidelines are that pediatric pain should be: “treated aggressively, taken seriously, and managed by multimodal means”—including nonpharmacological approaches (Ullán et al., 2014, p. 274). It has been proposed that a central

The researchers hypothesized that children would exhibit less pain if they were able to refocus their attention through play during the postsurgical period.

This article features an analytical experimental study that was intended to establish the effects of a postsurgical play program on children’s pain, which used a randomized parallel trial with both an experimental and control group (Ullán et al., 2014). The ages of the 95 eligible patients participating in the study ranged from 1 to 7 years. The procedure of the experimental group differed from the procedure of the control group. The procedure for the experimental group is as follows; a professional in social education contacted the parents prior to the surgery in order to discuss the importance of refocusing their child’s attention through play after the surgery in order to relieve any stress or pain their child may experience (Ullán et al., 2014). Once the child went to surgery, the parents in the experimental group received a short summary as well as the play material to be used when refocusing their child. The play material was exclusively designed for this study and was a plush toy rabbit dressed as a doctor (Ullán et al., 2014). For the control group, the children received the standard care of the hospital and their

For example, when considering Landreth’s definition of play, does this research even study play (Landreth, 2012)? Clearly, there is a difference of opinions on what constitutes as play, as Landreth believes that play is child-oriented, but in this study play is completely initiated by the parent. On a more positive note, both Landreth and the researchers of this study agree that it is important for parents to be partners in therapeutic play (Landreth, 2012). Another interesting relation to class discussions, is how play used in the study can be categorized as any of the three types of play practice because it all depends on how the parent and child interacted when ‘playing’ with the plush toy. If the child used the toy to learn about his surgery and it aids in learning/development then this could fall under educational play practice. Conversely, if the child used the toy to play freely or as an outlet for discovery, this could be considered recreational play practice. Equally, if the child used the toy to be expressive or as a way to confront stressors, then this type of play could be associated with the ideals of therapeutic play practices (Howard & McInnes, 2013). This study also aligns decently with the ideals and practices of Child Life Specialists (CLS), and the implications of this study for CLS can be far-reaching. The authors state that