Pain-coping scale for children and their parents: a cross-sectional study in children with musculoskeletal pain

Abstract

Background In a chronic pain-causing disease such as juvenile idiopathic arthritis, the quality of coping with pain is crucial. Parents have a substantial influence on their children’s pain-coping strategies. This study aimed to develop scales for assessing parents’ strategies for coping with their children’s pain and a shorter improved scale for children usable in clinical practice. Methods The number of items in the Finnish version of the pain-coping questionnaire for children was reduced from 39 to 20. A corresponding reduced scale was created for parental use. We recruited consecutive patients from nine hospitals evenly distributed throughout Finland, aged 8–16 years who visited a paediatric rheumatology outpatient clinic and reported musculoskeletal pain during the past week. The patients and parents rated the child’s pain on a visual analogue scale from 0 to 100 and completed pain-coping questionnaires and depression inventories. The selection process of pain questionnaire items was performed using factor analyses. Results The average (standard deviation) age of the 130 patients was 13.0 (2.3) years; 91 (70%) were girls. Four factors were retained in the new, improved Pain-Coping Scales for children and parents. Both scales had 15 items with 2–5 items/factor. The goodness-of-fit statistics and Cronbach’s alpha reliability coefficients were satisfactory to good in both scaled. The criterion validity was acceptable as the demographic, disease related, and the depression and stress questionnaires correlated with the subscales. Conclusions We created a shorter, feasible pain-coping scale for children and a novel scale for caregivers. In clinical work, the pain coping scales may serve as a visualisation of different types of coping strategies for paediatric patients with pain and their parents and facilitate the identification of families in need of psychological support.

Percepción sobre la valoración del dolor en la población pediátrica por el personal de enfermería.

“…Notejane et al, mencionan que en la evaluación del dolor es muy importante incluir a los familiares y cuidadores del niño, ya que son una de las principales estrategias de analgesia no farmacológica utilizadas, permitiendo al personal de enfermería trabajar de forma minuciosa con el paciente pediátrico e inclusive reducir el temor y ansiedad de este al momento de realizar procedimientos que pueden ser dolorosos, tal como narraron los https://doi.org/10.56048/MQR20225.7.4.2023.75-87 Vol.7-N° 4, 2023, pp. 75-87 Journal Scientific MQRInvestigar 84 entrevistados en el presente estudio (Backström et al, 2023;Lemus Ajhuachu, 2019;Notejane et al, 2016). Acorde a Backstrom y colaboradores es importante realizar una valoración correcta y comprender los sentimientos del niño en relación con el ambiente encontrado y el personal de su entorno, ya que estos pueden influir en mimetismos y ocasionar sesos o diagnósticos erróneos.…”

“…Acorde a Backstrom y colaboradores es importante realizar una valoración correcta y comprender los sentimientos del niño en relación con el ambiente encontrado y el personal de su entorno, ya que estos pueden influir en mimetismos y ocasionar sesos o diagnósticos erróneos. Otros autores mencionan que valorar el nivel de desarrollo cognitivo del infante es muy crucial debido a que en casos particulares como discapacidad intelectual los principales informantes son los familiares y el único signo para considerar es la expresión facial (Backström et al, 2023;Delgado et al, 2021;Di Sarno et al, 2023). En la actualidad el personal de enfermería utiliza diversos instrumentos para la medición del dolor.…”