We have started in our ward to assess every child for possible pain and most of the children will be started on paracetamol for either fever or pain. If the child is verbal and communicates pain, we are also pretty good in then escalating the pain management according to the EML or the WHO guidelines.
Where we are failing, I think, is in non-verbal children, especially when they are not with a compassionate and watchful care giver. We don’t take the time to do a pain assessment on those children.
Also, the social pain, psychological, spiritual and cultural pain get little acknowledged, also as there are no allied health worker available (no psychologist, art or music therapists and completely overloaded OTs, STs and social workers).
We should assess the children for all the above pain sin our ward so we are able to show the lack of treatment and care for that and maybe in the future can do better.
