Many practical examples are offered for using reflexivity. Nurse researchers may choose one or a mixture of the options offered, such as use of time and space to distance themselves from their research, aspects of practical self-presentation, or a reflexive diary.

The recognition and treatment of paediatric pain in sub-Saharan Africa brings many challenges and barriers for health professionals to overcome. This paper aims to give a unique insight into the world of the health professional through a dynamic cycle of interpretation via Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis. In-depth interviews with six health professionals were conducted and revealed four main themes: a burden-filled workload, mythology, lack of education and pharmacology. Findings showed how working in this field affects health professionals personally; the task of treating children who suffer unnecessary pain is emotive and potentially damaging. The way in which parents, health professionals and children view pain in terms of their everyday existence and within the context of their culture seems fundamental to gaining a better understanding of the barriers to providing pain relief to children in sub-Saharan Africa.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Nursing is a stressful occupation, a fact that is evidenced by the high incidence of mental health issues reported by nursing staff (National NHS Staff Survey Coordination Centre, 2013). Children's nursing can be heart breaking, as there is often no explanation for the infant, child or young person becoming critically ill or being lost to an early death. Nurses are required to be caring and compassionate, although recent reports have highlighted concerns about the ability of nurses to relate to others, and this has led to initiatives to reinforce the need for compassionate action (Cummings and Bennett, 2012). Child branch student nurses can struggle with compassionate and empathetic care provision to parents. This does not necessarily arise from a deliberate lack of care for others, a claim sometimes made by the media (Dean, 2014), but more from an inability to see parent's perspectives, particularly in the challenging area of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). Neonatal nursing is a specialist area which requires the delivery of often crisis focused highly technical care to extremely premature and fragile infants (Vittner, 2009). This may involve ethical decision making and moral reasoning surrounding withdrawal of treatment, as well as the emotional care of vulnerable and initially powerless infants and family members. Aagaard and Hall (2008) discuss the needs of families on the NICU and describe the stress, alienation, uncertainty and grieving process which take places for the loss of a healthy full term infant. They also detail