Prevention and treatment of pain in pediatric patients is something our healthcare teams are devoted to improving. Enter the La Rabida Pain Committee. The Pain Committee is comprised of a team of physicians, nurses, child life specialists, phlebotomists, clinicians, therapists, and managers who all work on ways to advance the quality of pediatric pain care.

As members of the Pain Committee, two of La Rabida’s child life specialists, Viktoria De Jong and Becki Logan, utilize their expertise to pinpoint coping strategies and tools to reduce pain for patients while also supporting a child’s social-emotional needs.

Our child life specialists help our patients and families overcome some of the most difficult days during their hospital stay. As trained members of the healthcare team, child life specialists work to decrease a child’s anxiety, stress, and pain through various forms of play and education.

Assessing a patient’s pain is a top priority for our healthcare teams. Child life specialists work directly with patients and also coach parents on ways to help their child deal with pain. “We work together with staff and families to find the right strategy that is unique to a patient’s medical status and development,” according to Becki. Decreasing pain and anxiety not only helps the child, but also helps to ease the stress of parents.

The Pain Committee works to consistently implement new strategies that will provide support to patients during painful procedures.

“Working as an interdisciplinary team, we come up with what works best for each individual patient,” shared Viktoria. “Typically, we do this by considering the 3 P’s of pain management which are physical, psychological, and pharmacological.”

By taking a physical approach, a child life specialist may recommend modifying the position of the child, utilizing hot or cold packs, or performing pediatric massages. Psychological intervention techniques used could be anything from guided imagery, distraction, and deep breathing, which has been proven to decrease acute procedural pain, distress, and chronic pain. Our team of clinicians will also use pharmacological interventions like numbing cream, cold sprays, Sweet-Ease, devices like the Buzzy, which utilizes cold, vibrating sensations to block pain receptors, in addition to medications.

By decreasing the trauma and anxiety children can feel during procedures, our child life specialists are able to help the child feel more comfortable and avoid the dread of future procedures. For children living with chronic conditions that require these procedures on a routine basis, overcoming this fear is critical.

“As child life specialists and members of the pain care team, we may not be able to get rid of all pain, but we work alongside families to make their child as comfortable as possible,” said Viktoria.

This story was featured in the June 2020 issue of eCurrents, La Rabida's monthly newsletter. To view the June issue of eCurrents, click here.