Degree of knowledge of health care professionals about pain management and use of opioids in pediatrics.

Objective: To evaluate the degree of knowledge about pain management and opioids use by professionals working at three pediatric units.

Design: This is a cross-sectional study.

Setting: This study was carried out at three pediatric units (pediatrics, intensive care unit, and oncology) of Hospital de Clínicas de Porto Alegre, which is a university hospital located in southern Brazil.

Subject: The subjects of this study include physicians, pharmacists, physiotherapists, nurses, nursing technicians, and nursing assistants.

Methods: Cross-sectional study carried out in a university hospital in southern Brazil. A self-applicable semi-structured questionnaire was handed out to 182 professionals from December 2011 to March 2012.

Results: The response rate was 67% (122); the average percentage of correct answers was 63.2 ± 1.4%. The most frequent errors were: an opioid must not be used if the cause of pain is unknown (47%; 54/115); patients often develop respiratory depression (42.3%; 22/52); and confusion about symptoms of withdrawal, tolerance, and dependency syndromes (81.9%; 95/116). Only 8.8% (10/114) reported the use of pain scales to identify pain in children. The most often cited hindrance to control pain was the difficulty to measure and spot pain in pediatric patients. Finally, 50.8% (62/122) of them did not have any previous training in pain management.

Conclusions: Problems in the processes of pain identification, measurement, and treatment have been found. Results suggest that there is a need for both an investment in continuing education of professionals and the development of protocols to optimize the analgesic therapy, thus preventing increased child suffering.