Pain in children: knowledge and perceptions of the nursing staff at a rural tertiary care teaching hospital in India.

Objectives: To assess the knowledge and perception regarding pain amongst nursing staff and to determine whether varying clinical exposure to painful procedures in children had any association with their perception of pain.

Methods: A consensually validated questionnaire containing combination of questions from basic (must know) and advanced (nice to know) areas of knowledge about nursing pediatric patients and questions related to nurses' perception about pain in pediatric patients was administered to the eligible nursing staff at a Rural Tertiary Care Hospital in Western India. The responses to the questionnaire were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the comparisons were made by applying chi-square test.

Results: Three Hundred and Fifty one usable questionnaires (83.37 %) out of 421 were returned. The knowledge of the nurses in general regarding pain was observed to be poor. Only 60 % of all the nurses had complete knowledge of all the basic questions asked. Only 3.1 % had answered all of the five advanced questions correctly, while 96.9 % of the nurses had answered one or more questions incorrectly.

Conclusions: The deficit in knowledge and shortcomings in perception of nursing staff needs to be addressed and steps need to be taken to improve the nurse's knowledge and modify beliefs and attitude of the nursing staff towards the pain of the pediatric patients.