Differences in the Pain Score Evaluation of the Nurse, Mother and Child During Peripheral Vascular Access.

Abstract

Background: Children may experience pain due to medical procedures. Pain has short-term and long-term negative effects on children. Therefore, accurate assessment of pain is key to appropriate intervention. This study was conducted to determine the concordance or differences between pain reported by the child, mother and nurse during intravenous access.

Aims: The aim of this study was to determine agreement or differences between child, mother and nurse-reported pain during intravenous access.

Method: This descriptive study was conducted with 307 children aged 3-6 years and their mothers. Wong-Baker Faces Pain Rating Scale and Data Collection Form were used for data collection. Descriptive statistics, Shapiro-Wilk, Mann-Whitney U, Kolmogorov-Smirnov, Kruskal-Wallis and Cohen's kappa tests were used to evaluate the data.

Results: The children had a mean age of 4.72 ± 1.11 years, and 18.9% (n = 58) had prior experience with intravenous access. The average number of vascular accesses last year was found to be 1.66 ± 0.80 times. The average pain assessment scores reported by the child, mother and nurse were 4.21 ± 0.84, 3.56 ± 1.62 and 3.18 ± 0.80, respectively. In pairwise comparisons, it was found that there was no agreement between mother and child, nurse and child and mother and nurse (p > 0.05).

Conclusion: During intravenous access, the highest pain assessment scores were reported by children, parents and nurses, respectively. This situation revealed that the perceived pain level differed depending on the assessor.